'It was so nice': Vancouver students take home big prizes at national science fair

Vancouver was well represented at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa this week.

Three local students took home top awards from the competition, which featured nearly 400 of the brightest young minds from across the country competing in various categories.

Ann Wang, a student at Prince of Wales Secondary School in Vancouver, won the best project award in the "discovery" category.

In a Zoom interview with CTV News on Friday, she explained that her project, "Eradicating Cystic Fibrosis Biofilms by a Novel Non-Toxic, Multi-Pathway Salicylate Therapy," married two of her biggest academic interests: biofilms and cystic fibrosis.

"I've always been really interested in biofilms," Wang said.

"I find them to be fascinating. I think that when we think about bacterial infections, we usually think of singular bacteria or planktonic bacteria, but actually 60 to 80 per cent of all chronic infections are biofilms, so I’ve always been really interested in biofilm work and wanted to do a project on that."

Wang said she plans to pursue post-secondary education in immunology or microbiology, with an eye toward continuing her work on biofilms.

Other Vancouver-area students who took top prizes at the national science fair included Angela Cao and Tanvir Mundra.

Cao took home the best project award in the "innovation" category for her project, "S2S: AI-Powered Translation Between Sign and Spoken Languages."

Mundra received a platinum award in the discovery category for "Reviving Resources: Harnessing Soap Nut Greywater for Sustainable Plant Growth."

Wang said it was "surreal" to hear her name called as a best project winner.

"I was sitting there and I was like, 'No, that can't be true,'" she said. "It was so nice."

The full list of winners and awards – which includes numerous other student winners from B.C. – is posted on the Canada-Wide Science Fair website.