Mepham student scores big in international science competition

Those who know Nina DiFranco say that the Mepham High School senior isn’t one to back down from a challenge.

DiFranco, 18, spent seven weeks in the Michigan State University High School Honors Science Program last summer. She worked for 40 hours a week with professors and doctoral candidates, evaluating a new water-filtration technology designed to remove viruses from water using a “photocatalytic membrane reactor.”

DiFranco recently entered her project in the International Sustainable World Energy Engineering Environment Project Olympiad, and was named one of 440 finalists from more than 70 countries. She will travel to Houston next month to present her work.

Her determination is an integral part of her personality and her success as a young scientist, said Dr. David Kommor, her adviser at Mepham. Ever since Kommor met DiFranco, in his freshman biology class, he knew she would be a standout student. “I know how hard she worked. A lot of students would have given up sooner,” Kommor said. “I’ve seen this persistence since ninth grade.”

DiFranco’s decision to apply to ISWEEEP was her own. According to Kommor, no student from the Bellmore-Merrick High School District had ever applied to the program, but DiFranco was not deterred. “If I decide to do something,” she said simply, “I’m going to do it.”

She made the most of that can-do attitude at Michigan State. As one of 24 students accepted into the Honors Program, DiFranco said she knew she wanted to work in the laboratory, where Kommor had predicted she would thrive.

After learning about the lab’s work with the photocatalytic reactor, she got to work testing concentrations and types of catalysts, which stimulate chemical reactions. She tested how the byproducts of those reactions affected viruses in the water. If the byproducts attacked the viruses’ protein codes, the experiment was considered a success.

DiFranco said that the project is continuing, and there are as yet no concrete results. “For everything you solve, you get three more questions,” she said.