News Site about STEM Education Runs Story about Hanes Magnet Student

Sofia Pauca

On the website STEMwire.org, reporter Lincoln Pennington writes about Sofia Pauca’s research project into potential treatments for autism.

Sofia, an eighth-grader at Hanes Magnet School, started the project for a science fair.

“Her research would eventually lead her to become a regular at a lab at Wake Forest University, to spend hours spent monitoring fruit flies as they groomed themselves, and to test a potential treatment for autism. Ultimately, her project would propel her to the semi-finals of a national science fair,” Pennington writes. “Sofia, now 13, has been familiar since childhood with genetic disorders. Sofia’s little brother, Victor, was diagnosed at an early age with Pitt Hopkins Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that affects motor skills and overall development.”

Each year, Scarlett Mooney, the curriculum coordinator at Hanes, organizes a STEM Night. (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math.)

“I kind of joke that it is a science fair on steroids,” Mooney told Pennington.

Through her father, who is an associate professor in the computer science department at Wake Forest, Sofia found a biology professor at Wake Forest - Bill Conner – willing to serve as a mentor for the project. For the full story of how the project progressed from there, go to Pennington’s story at STEMwire.org


STEMwire is digital news service is powered by the Reese News Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication.