Science champion
Grimsby high school student Lucas Penny, 17 year old grade 11 student has won the top spot at the Southwestern Ontario edition of the 23rd Sanofi Biogenius Canada competition in Waterloo on April 13, 2016. His project focused on early detection of cancer through microfluidic detection in saliva. He also won the commercialization award, and best research poster, earning him 3500 dollars in prize money. The national final is in Ottawa on May 2-3.
Lucas Penny has been working as a high school research intern with Steven Panesar and under the mentorship of Professor Suresh Neethirajan of BioNano Lab of the University of Guelph, since August 2015. Lucas has developed a microfluidic device that uses salivary microRNAs profile expression analysis to detect cancer.
The annual Sanofi Biogenius Challenge Canada is a national, biotechnology research science competition for Canadian high school and CEGEP students. They’re challenged to take on university-level research projects under the mentorship from local scientists and researchers, who help with research design, resources and data analysis.
Lucas is excited to represent Southern Ontario at the National competition to be held at Ottawa from May 1-3, 2016. Lucas will also present his research results at the Canada-Wide Science and Engineering Fair to be held in Montreal during May 15-21, 2016.
