65th Annual STS (2005-2006)
Finalists
Jeffrey Chunlong Xing

MARYLAND
Jeffrey Chunlong Xing, 17, of Clarksville, entered the Intel Science Talent Search with a medicine and health project exploring the relationship between a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and its impact on human follicular thyroid cancer. Examining 503 thyroid tumor samples, Jeff screened for the thymine-quanine SNP on the 105th nucleotide (T105G) of intron 9 of the PIK3CA gene, which is a cancer-related gene. He found this SNP to be associated with a dramatically decreased risk for the development of follicular thyroid cancer, concluding that the T105G SNP is a novel cancer suppressor. First in his class of 376 at River Hill High School, Jeff is president of the Spanish club, an academic coach and winner of multiple awards in math, Spanish, poetry and English. His hobbies include table tennis, swimming, jogging, poetry and magic. A Baltimore hospital volunteer, Jeff, who was born in China, has used his Chinese language skills to help emergency room workers there. The son of Drs. Michael Xing and Lynn Ling Tao, Jeff plans to attend MIT or Harvard. One day, he hopes to pursue a biomedical or biophysics research career that allows him direct contact with patients.