63rd Annual STS (2003-2004)
Finalists
Kevin Yibo Wang

NEW YORK
Kevin Yibo Wang, 17, of Stony Brook, developed a new simulation method to predict protein structure for his Intel Science Talent Search project in biochemistry. His research focused on the "protein folding problem"-the challenge of correctly predicting a protein's three-dimensional tertiary structure given only its linear amino acid sequence. Kevin's protein simulations, done on parallel supercomputers, showed a three-fold improvement over constant temperature standard simulations. He believes his research may eventually help in computer-aided drug design. Kevin will be first author of a paper to be submitted to the Journal of Computational Chemistry, describing his methodology and preliminary results. His methods will be made available to all researchers with the next release of a commonly used molecular modeling program (AMBER). Kevin competes on the Science Olympiad Academic team at Ward Melville High School, East Setauket, and has consistently medalled on regional and state levels. He is a published author and sings with the all-county and all-state choirs. Born in China, Kevin is the son of Dr. Hu Wang and Jing Yuan. He plans to continue his studies at MIT.