las cruces, nm | now: 52° ( ...chme.nmsu.edu/files/2015/04/maes.pdf · with math," said...
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4/6/15, 8:19 AMMayfield senior is pioneering advancement in energy, technology and math - Las Cruces Sun-News
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By Damien Willis
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) @damienwillis on Twitter
POSTED: 04/05/2015 01:17:01 PM MDT
(/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=6719187)Jett Loe--Sun-News Sophia Sanchez-Maes on Friday working on music theory homework ather grandmother's house where she often studies.Las Cruces >> She calls herself a number artist.
Sophia Sánchez-Maes just turned 17, but you'd never guess it bylooking at her résumé. The Mayfield senior has already racked upmore than 90 credit hours at New Mexico State University,discussed her research on the future of algae as a biofuel withPresident Obama, and won countless prestigious awards in
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4/6/15, 8:19 AMMayfield senior is pioneering advancement in energy, technology and math - Las Cruces Sun-News
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(/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=6719186)Jett Loe--Sun-News The 16th AnnualHispanic Heritage National YouthAward presented to SophiaSanchez-Maes for her work ininformation and technology.
(/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=6719188)BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GettyImages Sophia Sanchez-Maes, of
Las Cruces, speaks to PresidentBarack Obama about using algae togenerate energy during the 2015White House Science Fair March 23,2015 in Washington, DC..
President Obama, and won countless prestigious awards inscience, mathematics and technology.
"Everything I've been able to accomplish so far starts and endswith math," said Sophia, the daughter of Jim Maes and MargaretSánchez-Maes. "I started computer science in middle school.That's when I wrote my first line of code. That's when it all clicked,and I realized that math was more than pencil and paper. It's morethan just rote computation — it's a way of thinking. Math is a wayof looking at the world, and I've really come to believe that it's mylifestyle."
By fifth grade, she was doing seventh grade math.
"The summer after sixth grade, I decided I wanted to keep doingmath because I liked it, so I took Algebra I," she said.
She blew through all of the high school math classes on a very accelerated track, often taking twoor three advanced classes at once. By the time she was a sophomore, she was taking dual-creditcourses at NMSU.
"As a junior, I took Finite Math, Proofs, and Modern Algebra — which is the theory of groups andrings and fields, all proof-based," she said. "This year, my senior year, the upper-division math thatI really wanted didn't fit into my schedule, and the other one was cancelled due to under-enrollment. But the department head, Dr. (Joe) Lakey, stepped up, and told me that he'd tutor mein something that was interesting to me. He thought that I was deficient in analysis, so he tailoreda curriculum to help me develop that."
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Improving Biofuels
During the summer of 2013, after her sophomore year, Sophia was working as a photonicsresearch intern in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico's Center for High TechnologyMaterials. While she was there, she began formulating a theory to help satisfy the world's energydemand.
"I'd heard a lot about algae, and the potential that biofuels held,"she said. "I'd heard about fuels that are enriched by corn, but it's soinefficient and ineffective — we spend a lot of energy to make thathappen, and we're using corn that could otherwise be used to feedmouths. That's a problem. Algae, on the other hand, kind ofseemed like the golden crop. It didn't have any of those problemswhatsoever."
Sophia discovered that algae can thrive on land unsuitable forother forms of agriculture.
"Here in New Mexico, especially, we had a lot of promise," shesaid. "We have exorbitant sunshine. We're short on water, butalgae can thrive in saline water, or wastewater — and we've gotthat."
During her junior year, she participated in the Supercomputing Challenge. With two teammates,Ian Rankin and Ahmed Muhyi, the trio created a computational model of the growth dynamics ofgreen microalgae.
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4/6/15, 8:19 AMMayfield senior is pioneering advancement in energy, technology and math - Las Cruces Sun-News
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"We had to create a mathematical model as well as a computational model to make that happen,and we did," Sophia said. "It ran thousands and thousands of simulations to figure out what wasoptimal to produce the most growth in certain conditions.
"One of the biggest problems with algae biofuel is that it took more energy to make than thebiofuels would contain," she said.
The team took third place at the Supercomputing Challenge, and Sophia set her sights on makingalgae biofuel production more efficient. Working with researchers at NMSU, she began studyingan "extremophile" algae native to Yellowstone National Park called Galdieria sulphuraria.
"The ultimate goal was to minimize production costs, to make algae biofuel competitive at thepump," Sophia said. "I used a process called thermogravimetric analysis to determine whether thisspecific algae would be a good source of fuel, and found that, by my measurements, it was betterthan any other algae except for Chlorella."
Sophia then pioneered a chemical method called hydrothermal liquefaction, which mimics highpressure, high heat conditions in the center of the Earth.
"We're basically pressure-cooking the algae inside a soup. So the water is part of the reaction,rather than an impediment," she said. "With this method, we've been able to get back in the black,as far energy gain goes. We're no longer running that deficit, which is a big deal."
Working with the National Science Foundation's Engineering Research Center, Sophia discoveredthat her algae can also treat wastewater better than other algae.
"In every city in the U.S., approximately 33 percent of energy is spent treating wastewater, which iskind of obscene," said Sophia. "Traditionally, part of the treatment and filtration process is donewith anaerobic bacteria, which extract the impurities like phosphorous and nitrogen from thewastewater. My algae can remove those better than anaerobic bacteria, and thrives in wastewater.This also eliminates the cost of nutrients for growing the algae, because it's feeding itself off of thecontaminants."
Awards and achievements
For her work, Sophia was named a National Science Foundation Young Scholar.
On March 23, she was able to share her work with President Obama at the White House ScienceFair.
"(Sophia is) helping to bring the world closer to using algae as a clean, renewable, and eveninexhaustible energy source," Obama said, speaking at the event in the East Room of the WhiteHouse. "And it's already being tested in her hometown, the process that she's developing. It isamazing."
Sophia has also earned the Hispanic Heritage Foundation's Gold Award in Engineering andMathematics, and recently won the National Center for Women in Technology Award forcomputing.
She has received full-ride scholarships to M.I.T. and Princeton. Yale has offered her theirQuestbridge Scholarship, a comprehensive package worth more than $250,000. She hasn'tdecided on a college yet, but the offers continue to roll in. Columbia University has offered her afull-ride, plus $10,000 for her research as a science research fellows. Only 10 Columbia studentsper year are asked to participate in the program.
Sophia is also a two-time Junior Olympian in cross country, and has done extensive cancerresearch, examining how cancer cells metastasize — which she's not ready to talk about yet,"because I'm still working on it."
She received the National Merit Scholarship, and is a finalist for the Gates MillenniumScholarship, offered by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
After graduating in May, Sophia will spend the summer working at NASA's Jet PropulsionLaboratories in Pasadena, Calif.
"I'm going to be working with the Thermal Team to develop code for the Mars Rover," she said. "Alot of the equipment on the Mars Rover is older equipment, and there are time delays betweenNASA sending data up and the Rover putting that information into use. The goal of my project willbe to create a sort of 'real-time' Mars Rover, using the power of high-performance computing toimprove a lot of those functions."
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4/6/15, 8:19 AMMayfield senior is pioneering advancement in energy, technology and math - Las Cruces Sun-News
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At today's City Council meeting, Mayor Ken Miyagishima is expected to issue a proclamation,declaring today "Sophia Sánchez-Maes Day" in Las Cruces.
Her father, Jim, said that the family is genuinely grateful for the Las Cruces Public Schools systemand its dual-credit program, which has provided Sophia with the resources she has needed toexcel.
"LCPS and NMSU have really been amazing," said Maes. "When Sophia needed to take coursesthat were beyond what they offered, she would go in and negotiate with them, and they would giveher credit for the courses. Because of that kind of flexibility, and LCPS working with NMSU,Sophia has been able to accomplish what she has."
Damien Willis can be reached at 575-541-5468.
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