MEMBERSHIP
DCMS PARTICIPATES IN THE 2022 DALLAS
REGIONAL VIRTUAL SCIENCE FAIR
By Sarah Helfand, MD
For the second year in a row, DCMS gave
May 2022 • DALLAS MEDICAL JOURNAL | 25
out their Special Award for the Dallas
Regional Science Fair under a COVID-19
protocol. Even though we still weren’t
able to do what we all love to do in
judging the Senior Science Fair projects, which
is actually talk to the kids, this year was better
than last year. The two things that made it
better were we were able to see copies of their
actual poster presentations and we did our fi nal
picks via a conference call. (To remind you what
last year was like, we only got the titles and abstracts
and made our decisions via email.)
So, on February 19, Matt Sloan, Preeti Malladi,
and myself held a conference call to hash
out who to recognize with the Special Award
from DCMS. Thank goodness for Preeti, who set
up the conference call. We did our work from
home in front of a computer and didn’t have to
get out on a cold rainy day. We had the chance
to review the projects ahead of time and had
emailed one another about our initial thoughts,
but on that morning, our minds were changed
and we came to a consensus. The criteria we
used was the project should be original work
from the student themselves, should not be in
conjunction with a major medical school project,
and should make a signifi cant contribution
in dealing with a medical problem. We looked
at the categories of Biomedical and Health
Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Translational
Medicine.
We fi rst narrowed our choices down to eight
of the best. We chose for honorable mention a
project titled “Understanding Vascular Endothelium
Behavior Using a Mechanical Strain
Gradient Generated by an Electromagnetic
Stretching Device.” The student designed a
stretching device to study its eff ect on vascular
endothelial cells. We were impressed by the
amount of work the student put into the project,
but it really didn’t have results yet.
For second place, we chose a project from
Translational Medicine that used artifi cial
intelligence for the interpretation of mammograms.
Its title was “Evaluating Mammograms
to Diagnose Breast Cancer Using Machine
Learning.” We were impressed with the amount
of computer programming and the setup of
the confusion matrix to make it possible for
machine learning to know which mammograms
were worrisome for cancer and which were not.
We felt that in Dallas, we are blessed with excellent
radiologists that interpret mammograms
well, but in a rural area, this technology could
be priceless.
And fi nally, the project that won fi rst prize.
The title was “Investigating the Potentiality
of an Alternative Realistic Cure for Multiple
Sclerosis Using Neoblasts from Dugesia tigrina
(planaria) on Lumbricus terrestris (earthworms)
as a Model Organism.” We were fascinated
by the potentiality of this project on making
progress in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.
The earthworms were treated to give them a
picture like MS, then treated with the planaria
neoblasts, which basically gave them a clinical
and pathological cure. The student went further
to treat some earthworms with the neoblasts
prophylactically before
causing them to be
treated with what made
them look like MS — and
they didn’t develop a
picture of worm MS. We
fi rst had to get over the
fact that the student
was using worms, and
we also discussed the
ethical considerations
of using neoblasts that
are compatible with humans.
However, after all
the discussion, this was
our favorite choice.
Yes, there were
projects that were very
impressive that were
done in a medical school
laboratory with amazing
mentors to the students,
but we felt that these
students were already
being encouraged a
lot. We chose the ones
that we felt needed our
encouragement.
Lastly, we are sincerely
hoping to judge
the Science Fair next
year in person. We miss
interacting with the
students. It won’t even
matter if we have to go
out on a cold and rainy
day. DMJ