From left to right, Moira Yarbrough, Emersyn Kopp, Akina Pallera and Zoe Alther with their model of a nanobot.

Fifth-graders Akina Pallera, Emersyn Kopp, Moira Yarbrough and Zoe Alther can imagine a world where nanobots can help stop lung cancer almost as soon as it starts.

The team of girls, all of whom are fifth-graders in a one-day a week pull-out program for the gifted at Edison Elementary, are regional finalists in their age category in the ExploraVision 2019 national contest. They are competing against five other teams for the national prize. The top first-place and second-place winners in the contest will win a trip to Washington, D.C. Each of the first-place winners will receive a $10,000 savings bond; each of the second-place winners will receive a $5,000 savings bond. The students should find out who won the contest by the end of April or the start of May.

Eight teams in the pull out program at Edison had entered the contest.

Julie Jaeger, a teacher for the gifted and talented, said the contest requires students to identify a problem that can be solved with technology and what that technology might look like within 20 years. The girls’ idea is the “MAZE Nanobot,” a specialized, tinier than minuscule nanobot that would be implanted into the lungs, detect cells that are abnormal and then zap them with radiation.

The name MAZE comes from the first letter of each of their first names.

“Each MAZE will have a 360-degree camera, a series of cancer cell sensors placed in multiple locations, and laser radiation blasters which will also be placed in a way they can attack in multiple directions,” the girls wrote.

During the initial stage of the project, the students wrote an abstract giving a thumbnail description of their idea. They also wrote a research paper that describes how the current technology works, its history, how it might look in the future, what it will take to make it work and sample web pages. The end result is a paper that would rival many a college freshman’s science research paper.

The girls said they were surprised when they found out they were among the regional winners.

“My face, my mom said, was priceless!” said Moira.

“It was really hard because we had to keep it a secret from everyone and so like we would be really excited but we couldn’t tell anyone,” said Akina.

“I’m excited because I’m awesome,” said Zoe.

The project was the result of months of work that began last fall. Unlike some of the teams they are competing against, the girls attend different elementary schools for four days a week and only had time for one day a week to work on the initial stage of their project. Emersyn is a fifth-grader at Bel Air Elementary; Akina is a fifth-grader at North Plains Elementary at Minot Air Force Base; Zoe is a fifth-grader at Lewis and Clark Elementary; Moira is a fifth-grader at Perkett Elementary.

Emersyn said one of the hardest parts was brainstorming the idea and deciding exactly what they wanted to do.

One of Akina’s initial suggestions was using dolphins to save people who are drowning.

They put aside that idea in favor of the project using nanotechnology. Jaeger said many other teams that entered the contest also had the idea of using technology to treat or prevent a disease.

For Akina, the final idea had some personal associations.

“I knew that in my mom’s side of the family, like, there was a thing for second-hand smoking and lung cancer, so I was like, let’s do lung cancer and you see so many ads on the internet about lung cancer and how it affects so many people and then we decided we would have to go more in depth and we decided to do adenocarcinoma because that’s the most common type of lung cancer and that’s where we set off from there,” said Akina.

When they learned they had won the regional contest, the students had to do more work to prepare for the national competition, including creating a video.

They also created a model of their nanobot, which is much larger than the real thing would be.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.

“I saw that if a nanometer was a marble then a meter would be at the whole earth,” said Zoe.

Filming the video also required them to give some thought to how they would look as well as how they would sound. They made the nanobot model look like it was flying and filmed themselves talking in front of a green screen. Other students were wearing lab coats in the videos that they made, but one of the girls’ mothers produced a blazer that the girls wore in the video to look more professional.

They have also learned about all of the possibilities that might arise from scientific advances, though Zoe is pretty sure that a career in medicine isn’t in the cards. “I don’t want to be a nurse or doctor because I get disgusted with even blood or something … it’s like ugh!” said Zoe.

Moira said medicine might be a career she would consider.

Jaeger said the girls also practiced their language arts and math and science skills as well as their problem solving skills when they worked on the project.

Minot Public Schools has had some students receive honorable mentions in the ExploraVision contest, but Jaeger said this team is the first from the district to ever win a regional award.

The quality of the projects produced by the students is another indicator that the gifted and talented program is on the right track, said Jaeger.