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Several years after his father died in a 2005 plane crash, Alexander Coffman had an epiphany: Maybe he could help prevent future crashes.
Coffman, who had been reading about the accident in the National Transportation Safety Board’s probable cause document, has been working toward his goal of becoming an aerospace engineer by researching aircrafts and visiting airplane hangars ever since.
Earlier this year, he competed in the 2018 Metro Richmond STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Fair, entering a project about the effect of winglet design on the weight of aircrafts, related to lift and drag.
Last month, he earned national recognition for his efforts when he was named one of the top 300 competitors in the Broadcom Foundation and Society for Science and the Public’s eighth-annual Broadcom MASTERS program – the premier STEM competition for middle-school students.
Coffman was one of three Henrico students to earn the recognition – a stunning achievement for one locality, according to competition organizers.
“There’s something about the water that the kids are drinking there,” Society for Science and the Public President and CEO Maya Ajmera told the Citizen. “These are the top 300 young scientists in the country. That’s a pretty huge honor, and having three coming from the Richmond area, it’s just extraordinary. It just says a lot.”
Ingenuity and innovation
Coffman and the other two Henrico students – Cameron Sharma and Tatiana Vaniakin – now are freshmen in high school (Coffman and Sharma at Mills Godwin, Vaniakin at Tucker).
Regional and state science fairs that are affiliated with the SSP for the Broadcom MASTERS are eligible to recognize the top 10 percent of their sixth- through eighth-grade participants as Broadcom MASTERS nominees, which totals about 8,000 students.
Of the 8,000 nominated students, 2,537 applied to be in the top 300; judges from throughout the country evaluated their applications and selected the honorees.
“There’s a whole mechanism of how judging occurs,” Ajmera said. “We’re looking for ingenuity, innovation, thinking outside the box. We’re also looking for things that are intangible, like leadership skills, teamwork skills, communication skills – it’s an amalgam of several things.”
For the three Henrico students, that amalgam seems to come naturally. Generating change in the world is only one of the goals each of these young scientists sought to explore with their Metro Richmond STEM Fair entries this year.
For Coffman, science has always been enjoyable and interesting. He revels in the hands-on aspect of it all, he said. It’s an interest sparked by the aftermath of his father’s plane crash.
“That has inspired me to work on corporate jets as an aerospace engineer in the future, to make them safer, so that that won’t happen to someone else’s father or brother or husband.”
Coffman’s primary high school goal is to complete more ground-breaking research that not only interests him but advances the safety of aviation as well. In addition to being named one of the Top 300 Broadcom MASTERS, Coffman received the Student Science of the Year award in sixth and seventh grade, and he placed in the top three for the Technology Student Association.
Like Coffman, Vaniakin also was motivated by personal experience in her research. Vaniakin’s project, titled “Effect of Dominant and Non-Dominant Brain Stimulation on Cognitive Skills,” tested logical and creative brain exercises, and the ways in which they impact cognitive skills.
Vaniakin explained that the stronger a person’s cognitive skills are, the less his or her chance of dementia. Two years ago, Vaniakin’s great grandmother was diagnosed with dementia.
“It’s been hard to see such a loving and intelligent person fade away,” Vaniakin said. “I decided to try to find some sort of cure for this, because so far, there hasn’t been any. But research still continues, so hopefully, soon enough, there will be a cure.”
Vaniakin realized the effect of her research on the day of the Metro Richmond STEM Fair.
“This one woman came up to me – her whole entire family had dementia – and basically my project opened her eyes,” Vaniakin said. “She could have some sort of solutions to possibly prevent her from getting dementia, and her family members, and it’s just really great to help a person out. That’s what science is for.”
‘They will rise to the top’
Using science to help others is a concept familiar to Cameron Sharma.
Sharma created a computer model that calculates the efficacy of seasonal flu vaccines, and questioned whether this year’s flu epidemic had been preventable. After contracting the flu a few years back, he decided to dedicate his research to hindering the spread of this infection.
Thirty of the 300 Broadcom MASTERS are selected as finalists, based on evaluations by a team of scientists, engineers and educators. Sharma was chosen as one of the thirty in 2017 – a feat which his father, Shekhar Sharma, described as stratospheric.
“I think what makes a difference in [Cameron’s] case is that he goes after knowledge that is not necessarily only required for school,” he said in a phone interview. “That makes a big difference. He is constantly educating himself.”
This month, Sharma is competing in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, during which he will present his innovation, uFlu – a personalized vaccine prescription based on a flu prediction math model. Sharma is one of the few students in the world who has ever scored perfectly on the Math SAT at the age of 12.
“He’s just the kind of student you want all your students to be,” said Maria Mitchell, Sharma’s science teacher at Moody Middle School.
Sharma and Coffman are enrolled in the Todd M. Phillips Center for Medical Sciences at Godwin. The program is designed to provide eligible students interested in pursuing careers in medicine and health sciences with the opportunity to gain early exposure to advanced courses, research laboratories and medical shadowing.
Although Vaniakin’s project for the Metro Richmond STEM Fair focused on human brain cognition, her career interests lie within the field of marine biology.
As Vaniakin’s mother, Marina, pointed out, her daughter’s ambition is a powerful one: to provide a voice for the marine animals who do not have one. Her means for achieving this goal extends further than just research, though. Earlier this year, Vaniakin wrote a letter to Congressman Dave Brat, explaining the potential effects of his vote for bringing oil production closer to the shore.
“I told him how it could impact our oceans and the animals in them, as well as how this impacts the people living by the shore,” Vaniakin said. “It could pollute our waters and it could cause harm to not only the creatures, but us as humans because we like to go swimming at the beach, so it’s not a very good combination – oils and waters.”
Aside from serving as an advocate for marine life and contributing to the growth of knowledge about dementia, Vaniakin is a fluent Russian speaker, a ballerina and a creative thinker and writer.
“I have high hopes that she will change the world for the better, because her heart is in the right place,” her mother said.
Maybe there is something about the water that the kids are drinking in Henrico, after all.
“They’re just … they’re perfect,” said Mitchell, who knows all three students through her role at Moody. “If these kids are being challenged, they will rise to the top.”
