Calgary Grade 9 student named one of top 10 young scientists in Canada

A Grade 9 student from Calgary was named one of the best young scientists in Canada after her biodegradable plastic stole the show at an Edmonton science fair.

A Calgary junior high school student has been named one of top young scientists in the country.

Gayatri Sakharkar, 15, traveled to Edmonton at the end of May for the Canada-Wide Science Fair where she was named one of the top 10 young scientists in Canada in her age category.

Sakharkar was one of 17 students who earned the right to attend the national event after placing high at the Calgary Youth Science Fair last April -- but was a little shocked to do as well as she did.

“I knew I worked hard on this project, I knew that I put like a lot of effort but after I went to nationals, the competition there - and looking at other people’s projects was very intimidating and I did not think I would place first in my category or even get a Youth Can Innovate grand award,” she said.

“After winning that, I was like oh my gosh yes, this is amazing,” she added, “I’m still a bit shocked about that result but yes, I’m really happy with that (outcome)!”

Low-toxicity plastic

Sakharkar developed a novel, low-toxicity plastic to be used for agriculture. Plastic mulch films are widely used in agriculture to improve crop yields but those conventional plastic films, including biodegradable alternatives contribute to microplastic pollution because they are often derived from petroleum-based biopolymers.

Her solution was a biodegradable film derived from orange and pineapple peels.

“Polysaccharides are long chains of sugars and they are derived from simple materials like orange peels and pineapple peels,” she said. “And through extracting these sugars from these waste materials, I was able to create a low toxicity plastic (that is) affordable and with similar effectiveness to conventional films.”

She says when her product breaks down, it’s into simple sugars, with the side benefit of feeding soil microbes that help the plants grow even more, increasing yield for farmers.

Sakharkar’s entry earned her a gold medal, a Youth Can Innovate Grand Award and she placed first in her category, winning a challenge award in agriculture, fisheries and food.

She says there’s still some work to be done.

“I need to do more testing, especially on real organisms,” she said. “Because of ethical considerations, I did not test on actual animals that could be impacted, I mostly remained on microbes and plants and I did chemical predictions of the toxicity but in the future there should be as more toxicity testing on real animals.”

Impressive

Alex Gierus, Calgary Youth Science Fair Society past president was in Edmonton for the national event and was impressed at the showing of the 17 students who attended from Calgary.

“The projects that do well at the Calgary Science Fair are the ones that the student do most of it,” he said. “That there’s lots of novelty, it’s technically difficult and it has real world value and I think Gayatri’s project fulfills all of those.”

Gierus says placing high at the Canada-Wide Science Fair and even winning categories is impressive.

“It’s very hard at the at the Canada-Wide to even win a medal and Gayatri was one of the very top winners winning special awards and including the gold medal,” he said. “If you can put ‘science fair winner’ on your resume, especially if you’ve done well at the regional and national level, then that goes a long way -- some of the (university) programs are quite competitive and it’s almost like anything that you can do to put your resume ahead helps.”

Sakharkar also wants to manufacture her product on an industrial scale in the future but is now focused on finishing her exams to complete her Grade 9 studies at the STEM Innovation Academy Southwest Junior High School.