奧巴馬總統參觀2014年白宮科學展 (President Obama Tours the 2014 White House Science Fair)

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The President: Hello Science Fair participants.
Where are they?
Oh, you're first.
(laughter)
The President: It's kind of intimidating.
Look at all these pictures.
Alana Simon: Hello.
The President: How are you?
Alana Simon: Great, how are you?
The President: Good to see you.
Alana Simon: Good to see you, too.
The President: Well we're so proud of you.
Alana Simon: Thank you.
The President: I was reading up on you.
You've done great stuff.
Alana Simon: Thank you very much, Mr. President.
The President: All right.
So, the, I don't know if folks are aware of this story,
this young lady is remarkable.
They're all remarkable, but I think it's appropriate
we start right here.
Tell everybody your name.
Alana Simon: Hi, I'm Alana Simon.
The President: Alana Simon.
And Alana, here is a picture of you when you got sick.
So, what happened?
Alana Simon: Well, when I was 12 years old,
I was diagnosed with a rare form of pediatric liver cancer,
called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma.
The President: Wow --
Alana Simon: That's --
The President: That's so impressive that you can say it.
Alana Simon: Years of practice.
The President: Yeah.
Alana Simon: And not many people know much about the disease.
No one understood it at the time.
And that was pretty scary.
But I was lucky in that they caught it early enough.
So through, you know, a liver surgery in which they resected
most of my liver, they were able to get the entire tumor out.
And I've been completely ever since, which is incredible.
The President: But you look great.
Alana Simon: Thank you very much.
The President: Yeah.
Alana Simon: So then, a couple of years later,
I had this internship at Cancer Research Lab,
and I learned about this thing called genetic sequencing --
The President: (affirmative)
Alana Simon: Where you look through someone's DNA,
which is the stuff that codes for, you know,
your entire body.
And you'll get people's normal cells and their tumor cells,
and you try to figure out what the difference is,
what's causing this cancer.
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: And I realized that would be perfect
for fibrolamellar, because you don't have to have
some kind of base understanding of the disease.
And as a pediatric cancer, it seemed to be perfect for,
you know, looking at your DNA to find the (inaudible) mutations
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: Because, since you're younger,
you'll have less random mutations.
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: So, I talked to my surgeon actually, who had,
you know, cured me.
And he mentored me, and he actually got a lot of the
samples that I used, and he helped me start this process,
where I was doing genetic sequencing on the kind
of cancer I had had.
And what we ended up finding is this one common mutation
in every single case that we've looked at,
that seems to be causing this disease --
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: So, if you'll get to use some nice
swim noodle chromosomes --
The President: These are, right.
Alana Simon: So, chromosomes are where you have all
of your DNA stored, which has your genes that it codes
for, you know, everything.
And so here, in blue, I have one gene, and in green,
I have another.
And what happens in fibrolamellar patients,
here is a normal person's chromosome --
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: And here is a person with cancer.
And so, yeah, you can see, there's this one deletion.
So if you look at this, this middle part gets deleted --
The President: Right.
Alana Simon: Its noodles, these two genes fused together.
And you get this weird chimera gene, like chimera is, you know,
from Greek mythology, you have the head of one create and the
body of another.
So --
The President: I remember.
Alana Simon: You have the head of one gene,
and the body of another.
And so, that's what happened in these fibrolamellar patients.
And when these two genes are fused together,
this weird new chimera protein is what then goes into and turns
on all these other genes and actually causes
this cancer in patients.
And so now that we know this, we can create a blood test
to actually test people, diagnose them early --
The President: So we can catch
it even quicker --
Alana Simon: Exactly.
The President: Because we know exactly what we're looking for?
Alana Simon: Precisely.
The President: And you then publish this
in Science Magazine --
Alana Simon: Yes.
The President: And received
Young Champion of Cancer Research Award --
Alana Simon: Yeah.
The President: From the American Cancer Society.
Alana Simon: Yes, it's incredible.
The President: We're so proud of you.
Alana Simon: Thank you.
The President: Can I just say that I did not
do it at 12, 13, or 18?
And it's just inspiring, and your parents must be (inaudible)
they see you, they do.
I'm sure they know today as well.
So, this is just a sampler of the kind of outstanding
young talent that we've got, all right?
Let's, I've got to get a good picture of people.
This is my title, all right.
(Laughter.)
The President: Are you getting the chromosomes
in the background?
Peyton Robertson: Yes.
The President: All right.
(Laughter.)
The President: All right,
so where are you going to school?
Alana Simon: I'm going to Harvard next fall.
The President: Yeah?
Are you excited about that?
What are you going to --?
Alana Simon: Yeah, I'm so excited.
I'm actually working on the lab, going to start with the blood
test and what is real.
The President: Yeah.
Are you interested in the research side or are you
thinking you might actually want to go to medical school?
Alana Simon: I have no idea.
I think I'm going to pursue research,
computer science is what allowed me to do all of this research.
So I'm definitely planning on studying computer science.
But I'll find some way to apply that to research or --
The President: Good.
Alana Simon: Whatever I choose.
The President: Well, we're very proud of you.
Give me a hug.
Alana Simon: Thank you very much.
The President: You're just doing great.
Alana Simon: Thank you.
The President: Unbelievable, that's wonderful.
How are you doing?
Peyton Robertson: I'm good, thank you.
How are you?
The President: I'm doing good.
I can tell you're a high-power guy.
What's your name?
Peyton Robertson: I'm Peyton, P-E-Y-T-O-N.
The President: Great to see you.
And where are you from, Peyton?
Peyton Robertson: I'm from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The President: Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
So what have we got here?
What is all this?
Peyton Robertson: So I actually
have two (inaudible) --
The President: You have two?
One was not enough?
You decided you had to have two?
Peyton Robertson: I don't know.
They asked me to bring two.
The President: All right.
Peyton Robertson: So, here (inaudible)
retractable training wheels
that allows the item to adjust the height
of the training wheels while actually riding a bike.
So, when you're feeling confident --
The President: Yeah.
Peyton Robertson: --You just twist the retraction handle.
The President: Aha, that's smart.
Peyton Robertson: And the wheels can come up.
The President: So you can basically,
rather than get your screwdriver and you're
like not screwing everything --
Peyton Robertson: There you go.
The President: -- And then you realize I'm still
kind of of wobbly, and then you've got to put them back
on, here, you can just kind of see, how are you feeling during
the course of the thing --
Peyton Robertson: But, in any case, if you want,
if you feel like you're about to fall --
The President: Yeah.
Peyton Robertson: --And lose your balance --
The President: Right away.
Peyton Robertson: -- It comes right back down.
And at any position, it locks in place.
So even if you start to lose your balance,
it will still give you enough time to be able to twist back
to the starting position.
The President: I could still use this now.
Do you have an adult version, or is it only on smaller breaks?
Peyton Robertson: Well, I'm watching over the kid's
bike manufacturer right now to help get it on the market,
but I'm sure this will be applied to --
The President: I think that's probably right.
(laughter)
The President: Have you patented this?
Peyton Robertson: I have a patent pending --
The President: Yeah.
Peyton Robertson: -- On both of these actually.
The President: Okay, well let's hear about the other one before
we get into the patient issue.
All right, so what's the second project you've got here?
Peyton Robertson: So here, I redesigned the sanal sandbag,
placing the traditional sand with polymer and salt.
You know, living in Florida, I know how devastating hurricanes
and saltwater flooding can be --
The President: Right.
Peyton Robertson: -- You know, we just had Hurricane Sandy
in the news, and I survived through Hurricane Wilma.
I was four (inaudible) with my mom,
which was such a scary experience.
The President: I can imagine.
Peyton Robertson: Yeah.
The President: You still remember that, huh?
Peyton Robertson: Oh, I do, many parts of it.
The President: How old are you now?
Peyton Robertson: I'm 12.
The President: Okay, all right.
Peyton Robertson: And, you know, today,
while sandbags are the most
common method of federal protection --
The President: Right.
Peyton Robertson: --They can be heavy,
and difficult to transport.
The President: Yes, I remember, because that --
Peyton Robertson: Like at Santa Costa beach, yeah.
The President: Yeah, yeah, I remember that sometimes
with hurricanes, and yeah.
Peyton Robertson: And then also, leave gaps in between
the individual bags when you stack them.
The President: They don't compress together, right?
Peyton Robertson: So I wanted to redesign the sanal sandbag
by replacing this thing with powder and salt.
So, when dry, my bags are really like,
wait, they only weigh four pounds.
But then when you add water, it expands.
And it becomes heavy, and it becomes 30 pounds,
and offers protection against saltwater flooding.
The President: So if I know that the flood's coming,
I can pack these up, we can deliver them to the site
much easier, you can fit more bags in there, right?
And you don't even have to add water because by definition,
the water's coming in to hit the bay?
Peyton Robertson: Well, yes, you can do that.
That is definitely a way.
If, before the flood, if you want to make sure,
you can also hose it down --
The President: You can just hose it down.
Peyton Robertson: That's another way you would
want to do it.
And the other advantage is if you stack them when the
light weight, you don't have to carry all these heavy bags,
but also, the polymer will expand.
It'll fill in the gaps in between the individual
bags while still being bonded by these
interlocking (inaudible) systems.
So it'll still stick together, and you won't have the gaps
in between in between the individual bags,
you have the traditional sandbags.
The President: Okay, time out here.
Now, the, where did you get the idea of,
this one I kind of get, right?
Because, basically, you skinned your knee and you thought,
you know, we should have a better design on this thing.
Peyton Robertson: Yeah, this is actually when my sister first
learned how to ride a bike.
The President: Yeah, all right.
Peyton Robertson: Yeah.
The President: So how did you get the idea for the whole
polymer thing, though?
Peyton Robertson: Well, you know,
I guess I thought about this living in Florida.
The President: Right.
Peyton Robertson: But for, the idea of polymer, you know,
for another idea that I had had earlier,
I've got to learn a little bit about polymer from a university
that I went to, University of Mississippi,
and I learned a little
bit about polymers, and when --
The President: How old were you when you went
to the University of Mississippi?
Peyton Robertson: I was about eight or so.
The President: Is that right?
Peyton Robertson: Yeah, I had --
The President: Yeah. (Laughter.)
Peyton Robertson: -- So, and, so,
polymers to me are found everywhere.
They're founded on skin tissues, they're founded in plants.
But the type of polymer that I used here is super absorbent
polymer, which takes on water and it expands when wet.
So, as you see here, this is what a polymer looks
like when it's all colored up.
But then, when you add water, it straightens out through
hydrogen bonding, and expands like this.
Here, you want to try?
The President: I do.
(laughter)
The President: I actually have one of these.
Peyton Robertson: Oh, you do? Yes --
The President: They're very cool.
I love them.
Peyton Robertson: Yeah, just try to poke them and spear them.
The President: Sometimes I just stare at them in space.
Peyton Robertson: I know.
The President: Sometimes in the Oval Office,
I just look at one of these, (inaudible).
The, well, so, you have a patent pending on this as well, huh?
Peyton Robertson: I do.
And, you know, but the idea of polymer has,
and the sandbag has been around for a while.
People have used them in diapers and in the snow,
and other (inaudible) bags.
And it takes on water and expands when wet.
The President: Oh, I see.
You've got, you can show us here.
Peyton Robertson: As you can see here,
I've been doing these little mini test tubes
for all the other (inaudible) the big one for you.
The President: Okay.
Let's see there
Peyton Robertson: Watch what's happened.
The President: Look at that.
Peyton Robertson: Yeah.
The President: Now this isn't going to spill over, is it?
Peyton Robertson: No, it's not
The President: This is not the blob, is it?
Peyton Robertson: No, it's not going to.
The President: It's not going to eat up the White House?
Peyton Robertson: I hope not.
The President: There you go.
Peyton Robertson: But, the key to my design
is the addition of salt.
As you can see here, seawater has a higher salt content.
It is therefore denser and heavier than tap water.
So as you can see here, this seawater sits below the dyed tap
water, because it has a higher salt content
and is therefore denser.
And I can show you here.
What's your favorite color?
Pick one.
The President: Blue.
Peyton Robertson: All right, I did blue.
The President: Okay, red.
Peyton Robertson: Okay.
The President: All right.
It's not really my favorite, but that's okay.
I'm just kidding.
Peyton Robertson: So, so if you
The President: This guy.
(laughter)
Peyton Robertson: --If you pour the sand without
working the surface tension
The President: Yeah.
Peyton Robertson: You can get this dyed tap water to sit
on top, just like this.
The President: Just as it is here?
Peyton Robertson: Just as it is here.
The President: Right.
Peyton Robertson: Perfect.
The President: Okay.
Peyton Robertson: And, this is important to my sandbag,
because I didn't want my bags to float away during the flood.
Obviously, that would be bad.
The President: Right.
Peyton Robertson: So, what I did was I added salt so the water
that came into the bag would be heavier and denser than
the approaching seawater, so therefore would sink below
the approaching seawater so my bags wouldn't float
away during the floor.
The President: Well, this is all remarkable stuff.
Now, the, so you're 12.
What grade are you in?
Peyton Robertson: I'm in sixth grade.
The President: You're technically in sixth grade,
but are you, you're thinking you might try to finish high
school a little quicker and get to university a little faster,
or you want to just kind of take your time and -- ?
Peyton Robertson: Yeah, you know, actually,
the program that I'm doing now, it allows me to accelerate
in certain areas.
The President: Ah --
Peyton Robertson: So, I'm taking like higher-level math and
science classes, I'm taking
grade-level English and other stuff.
The President: That makes perfect sense --
Peyton Robertson: So it's definitely (inaudible).
The President: Well, come on, let's take a good picture.
Come on.
Peyton Robertson: Okay.
The President: Peyton, where you at, oh, here we are.
All right.
Make sure you've got, the polymer's in here.
Peyton Robertson: Oh yeah.
The President: So, now, one last question.
Where do I buy stocking meat?
Huh?
Let's just invest in this guy, and then we'll see, like,
20 years from now, we'll be rich.
I was not like this.
Really proud of you --
Peyton Robertson: Thank you so much.
The President: And you make a great presentation also.
Peyton Robertson: Thank you.
The President: You have great confidence and clarity in
Peyton Robertson: Thank you.
The President: How you're describing what you do.
Peyton Robertson: Thank you so much.
The President: That's wonderful.
How are you?
Deidre Carrillo: I'm good, how are you?
The President: What's your name?
Deidre Carrillo: Deidre Carrillo.
The President: Good to see you.
The, now, (inaudible)?
Deidre Carrillo: Deidra.
The President: Deardra?
Deidre Carrillo: Deidra.
The President: Deidra?
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
The President: Okay, I got it.
Now, this looks like an electric go-cart.
Is that what it is?
Deidre Carrillo: That's basically what it is.
The President: That's basically what it is?
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
The President: And where are you from?
Deidre Carrillo: I'm from San Antonio, Texas.
The President: Okay.
And so, tell me about how you got involved in this project.
Deidre Carrillo: Well, that's a funny story.
I was the shortest in my senior class --
The President: Yeah.
Deidre Carrillo: And --
The President: I can't believe that.
Female Speaker: I was.
And they said you would fit perfectly in this car.
So, that's how it started.
And I've been doing this for three years.
The President: The, so, describe to me this vehicle.
And the goal here is to, is the goal to have, you know,
in these contests, the fastest electric car,
or the one that can travel the furthest, or both?
Deidre Carrillo: It's more about going the furthest and being
smart on your battery management.
That is what the competition is basically about.
The President: So it's like an efficency?
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
The President: Right?
The goal is how efficent is it relative to the amount of power
that's being generated --
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
The President: Electrically.
Okay.
The, well, I clearly cannot fit in this.
Are you able to fit in it?
Deidre Carrillo: Yes, I'm actually able to fit in it.
The President: Well, would you like to display it or do you
think you want to look cool and you just kind of want to --?
Female Speaker: I can, yes, definitely.
The President: (inaudible)
Deidre Carrillo: I'll have to get in.
The President: Yeah, of course.
So, how fast does this thing go?
That's a pretty serious seatbelt by the way.
That's the same one that we have on Black Hawks,
Black Hawk helicopters.
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
A big guideline is safety, so --
The President: Of course.
Deidre Carrillo: I do wear motorcycle helmets --
The President: Right.
Deidre Carrillo: --And I am very well taken care of.
The President: I'll bet.
All right.
How big was the team that helped you design the car?
Deidre Carrillo: We started in a team of six,
and now we're a group of 14.
The President: Okay.
You fit like a glove.
Female Speaker: Yes.
The President: And what's that little panel there?
What is that?
Is that the control?
Deidre Carrillo: This tells me what's (inaudible)
I would, during competition, I am focusing on going in circles
and, well, we were supposed to do tonometry.
Tonometry would've helped a huge amount.
The President: (affirmative)
Female Speaker: But this tells me how many volts im running,
how many amps
and I communicate that
to my electrical chief, and he told
me how fast to go to slow down.
The President: So he's going to give
you calculations based on optimizing the consistency
of the entire process.
And how fast is - are you typically going
when you're in one of these contests?
Deidre Carrillo: Ah the fastest --
the constant that we want is 35.
The President: 35 miles an hour?
Deidre Carrillo: 35.
The President: That's pretty fast?
Deidre Carrillo: Yes, the fastest was actually 38.
The President: I got you.
So what are you doing now, now that you've done
such an outstanding job, are you interested
in an engineer?
Did this prompt a long term interest?
Deidre Carrillo: Well, my job is actually public
relations, along with driver, so I'm actually
thinking of pursing public relations,
and part time driver.
The President: And part time driver.
Well, congratulations.
Alright, come on over here,
let's get a good picture.
Look at all these big trophies.
These trophies are bigger than you.
Deidre Carrillo: Yes.
(laughter)
scoot over so we can see them. 0:15:54.033,1193:02:47.295 The President: Alright,
There we go.
Congratulations.
Deidre Carrillo: Thank you.
The President: What's going on guys?
What's your name?
Daisjaughn Bass: Daisjaughn.
The President: Daisjaughn.
Good to see you.
Gerry McManus: Gerry.
The President: Gerry.
Good to see you. Brooke Bohn: Brooke.
The President: Good to see you.
Now, where are you guys from?
Daisjaughn Bass: Hudson, Massachusetts.
The President: And what grades are you in?
Daisjaughn Bass: 8th.
The President: 8th grade.
So what do we got here?
Daisjaughn Bass: It's a catapult.
The President: It's a catapult.
Daisjaughn Bass: Yep.
The President: Alright, so lets - I assume we get
to see it work, right?
Daisjaughn Bass: Yeah.
The President: Alright.
Before I see it work, tell me has this been an ongoing
project of the school?
I mean, each year, is there sort of a catapult
contest, or a robot building contest?
Or is this something that kind
of happened on something?
Daisjaughn Bass: After school,
we're part of Raytheon at the Boys and Girls club,
so we just --
The President: So Raytheon is a sponsor
at the Boys and Girls club?
Brooke Bohn: Yes, well we were part of it last year.
Daisjaughn Bass: We came in second out of 45 teams. 0:16:52.400,1193:02:47.295 The President: I see.
The President: Alright.
That's excellent, and what - how did you get
the idea of catapult, or was everyone
doing it together?
Daisjaughn Bass: So we had a lot of topics
to choose form since we all play basketball mostly.
The President: You do.
Yeah.
Daisjaughn Bass: So we choose basketball,
and we went with the angle and the trajectory
to making a three pointer.
The President: Yeah, okay, So that's --
did you construct this whole catapult yourself?
Daisjaughn Bass: Yeah.
And our Boys and Girls Club Director
Gary helped us make it.
The President: Where did you get this guy?
Daisjaughn Bass: Well, we got it, and we made it.
The President: This is a pretty
serious looking guy.
Alright, you want to show me how it works?
Now, how fast does this thing go?
Is it going to break anything?
Daisjaughn Bass: No.
The President: Alright, can I stand by here
just in case?
Alright, now I want you to protect me.
(laughter).
Okay, I'm going to hide behind you,
because I don't want to - Oh, okay, I think --
that I can handle.
Alright, let's try that again.
I just want to make - last time I was here,
there was a guy that was shooting marshmallows
out of a rifle, and like it was - this modified vaccuum
cube, you guys remember that?
Audience: Yes.
The President: That thing went fast.
That thing went --
it went right up there, didn't it?
The marshmallow might still be there.
Alright, lets try it out.
Come on.
Oh, that was a little low.
Let's try it again.
Let's try it again.
That was a perfect pass.
See.
The - well congratulations, if this
prompted an interesting, if any of you want
to be engineers, or designers, or work on technology,
stuff like that?
Daisjaughn Bass: No, not really.
I want to go to college for basketball.
The President: Oh, you want
to be a basketball player.
Yeah, everybody wants to be a basketball player,
I understand, until they get into college.
How tall is your dad and mom?
Daisjaughn Bass: Not that tall.
(laughter)
The President: Well, I just want to make that point --
keep up with your science homework, alright.
Pete, where are you?
Look at this guy right here.
Alright, we're proud of you guys.
Daisjaughn Bass: Thank you.
The President: Alright, you take care of yourself.
The President: All right, what
do we got here young people?
These are my Chicago homies right here --
(laughter)
The President: --Right?
Where do you guys go to school?
John Moore: I go to Lincoln Park.
The President: Lincoln Park.
Lydia Wolfe: I go to Castle System High School.
The President: It is great to see you, both excellent
schools, and what's your name?
John Moore: JT.
The President: JT?
Lydia Wolfe: Lydia.
The President: Lydia, all right.
So you guys start giving the robots, is that right?
John Moore: Yeah.
The President: How did you first become
interested in robots?
John Moore: Well, in Chicago, there is,
or there weren't very many opportunities for robots.
So what my mom did was she went out and said that
she would bring Mickey into Chicago.
So now we've created over half
the teams of Chicago, and --
The President: So your mom basically
started the whole robot trend?
John Moore: Yeah.
The President: I like that (inaudible).
John Moore: (inaudible) Chicago, and that's how
more people do it rather than --
The President: That's great.
The, and so, so, do you have a bunch of different
robotics teams in Chicago --
John Moore: Yes.
The President: Does Hails Franciscan have
one team, and then Wayne has a different one,
or do you guys all come from different schools
and sort of form like a club?
Lydia Wolfe: We all come from different schools.
The President: Uh-huh.
Lydia Wolfe: My team this year combined
with Chicago NATS since we were having trouble.
The President: Uh-huh, excellent.
All right, so, it looks like
you guys have been doing pretty good.
What do we have here?
Is this an example of one of our, one of your,
some of your handiwork here?
John Moore: Yep.
This is our FRC robot from this year --
The President: Uh-huh.
John Moore: We played a game sort of like
lacrosse, where they had
a twoflated ball that it picked up.
The President: Right.
John Moore: So, this arm comes down --
The President: Yeah.
John Moore: And then the rollers suck it up,
and then it brings it back.
And then we have, over here that we use to kick,
kick the ball.
The President: Oh, I see, okay.
Now, this one, we're not modeling in here,
I gather.
John Moore: We can show the arm going down
with the wheels.
The President: Yeah, but no actual ball?
John Moore: Yeah.
The President: Because we've hit
one of these guys, yeah.
(laughter)
The President: I like them.
Actually, this is a pretty good group.
There are some where I wouldn't have minded.
(laughter)
The President: But I don't see them here.
All right, let's see.
All right.
John Moore: All right, so --
The President: All good?
John Moore: There's two different driver's forks.
The President: Uh-huh.
John Moore: There is the part that
has the arm going up and down.
The President: Right.
John Moore: And then there's the part
that controls the other part.
The President: Got it.
And so these are all manually controlled?
John Moore: Yep.
The game is broken up into two parts.
There's one part where the robot drives by itself
The President: Right.
John Moore: For 30 seconds, and then there's
two minutes where the robot is driven against
five other robots on the field,
so a three-on-three game.
The President: That sounds pretty fun, yeah.
So, how long did it take you to construct
this particular robot?
John Moore: Six weeks.
The President: Six weeks?
John Moore: Mm-hmm, six weeks to design and build,
and everybody's given the challenge
at the same time.
The President: Outstanding.
Well, I'm so proud of you guys.
Come on, let's take a good picture
next to your robot.
Yeah, you come over here.
You get over here, and Pete,
make sure the robot's in the picture.
Got it.
Fantastic.
All right, the, so has this spurred interest
in you wanting to stay in engineering,
technology, things like that?
John Moore: Before joining this, I didn't know that
there were so many engineer jobs out there --
The President: Absolutely.
John Moore: But now that I know that,
The President: Yeah.
Well, you're going to be one of those engineers.
You too, especially we need young women
and engineering in sciences, all right?
Looking forward to seeing you guys do great things.
I'm proud of you.
Tell everybody back home I said hi.
John Moore: All right, thank you.
The President: All right?
John Moore: Thank you.
The President: How are you, sir?
Eric Chen: I'm good.
How are you?
The President: What's your name?
Eric Chen: I'm Eric.
The President: Good to see you, Eric.
Where are you from?
Eric Chen: Good to see you, I'm from San Diego.
The President: San Diego?
So what year are you in school now?
Eric Chen: I'm a senior now.
The President: You're a senior?
Do you know what you're going
to be doing next year?
Eric Chen: I'll be going to Harvard.
The President: I bet you are.
(laughter)
The President: So what do we got here?
Eric Chen: Yeah, so, in summary, what I was able
to do was use computers to speed up the discovery
of new medicine for the flu.
And the flu right now is a really big threat
where you have strains like H5N1, H7N9 --
The President: I've spent a lot of time worrying
about the possibility of pandemic, right?
Eric Chen: Yeah, and they're only
one mutation away from possibly causing a pandemic.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And the problem is we have
no really effective treatments for it.
The flu vaccine, so like flu shots,
they take several months to prepare.
And that's a time where over millions
of people could be dying --
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And they create antiviral drugs,
so so like a pill you take, and get better from the flu,
they're losing their effectiveness because
of resistance, restraints.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And so there's this urgent need
for a new flu medicine to kind of hold back
the pandemic wave while vaccines are being developed.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And so, right now, drug companies
are still kind of in that industrial era
of drug discovery, where they found, hey,
we can make robots do everything.
So they make robots test millions and millions
of chemicals, they just find
a few that might become real drugs.
The President: But that's not very efficient.
Eric Chen: Exactly, and so --
The President: It's sort of trial
by error as opposed to --
Eric Chen: Exactly, it's like kind
of brute force rather than reasoning, by logic.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: What I've been able
to do is use computers to first virtually go through
huge chemical libraries that predict which ones
would be most likely to work, and then followed
by only testing those, that small fraction
that's most likely to work.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And so, I've been able to take
a compound library of almost half a million chemicals,
and then using computer modeling,
isolating the top 237.
The President: And what is allowing you to,
what are the factors that allow you to win over this now?
What is it that you can anticipate, would make
a possible vaccine more effective?
Eric Chen: Right, so it's actually not a flu shot.
It would actually be a drug, so --
The President: I see.
Eric Chen: It would be like, yeah,
it's curative curative rather than preventative --
The President: Okay, so rather than
the traditional giving you a little bit of fluid
to boost your immunity to the flu --
Eric Chen: It's actually giving you a chemical
The President: A chemical cure.
Eric Chen: Right.
The President: That's fascinating.
Eric Chen: Yeah.
And one of the great advantages to one
of the target sites using to make these chemicals
for is that it's highly conservative amounts
of (inaudible), being that it could potentially work
against any food string, even if you have no idea
where it's coming from.
And so, basically, one of the ways that
I'm looking at kind of finding these chemicals that work
is actually kind of taking little, how it works
is you're targeting a protein of the flu virus.
And, so, this is actually a printed structure
of one of the flu protein
(inaudible) targeted --
The President: This thing was in my nose
just about three weeks ago.
(laughter)
It lasted forever, couldn't get rid of it.
Not really, I'm just joking.
(laughter)
All right, so this is a 3D model
of a nasty flu bug right there.
Eric Chen: Right.
And how, and what we do is we, or I try to find these
little kind of chemicals like that, that kind
of fit into this pocket right here,
and jam it and stop it from working.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And so, by doing this, so how the
computer does it is it takes kind of the millions
or the half a million different kind
of chemical structures, and fits each one in.
And then it ranks them based
on how well they fit.
And so by doing that, if, the ones that
fit really well are
kind of more predicted to --
The President: More likely to --
Eric Chen: Exactly.
The President: To work.
The, now this is a pretty significant new direction
in terms of developing a flu drug.
And, you're only in high school.
So, the question is, has this approach gained
sort of converts among the drug companies where
they say to themselves, you know what, actually this
is pretty promising --
Eric Chen: Right, well --
The President: Or are you still, because of its
infancy, they don't know how smart you are,
it'll take them a while to figure that out?
Eric Chen: Well research groups have started
using these kind of new and innovative tools
for kind of, yeah, rational drug discovery.
The President: Right.
Eric Chen: And the problem,
well drug companies, they're huge, and because of that --
The President: There you go.
Eric Chen: They're kind of sluggish to responding
to this kind of innovation.
And so one big thing is actually kind
of convincing them to kind of take up these different
tools in order to make it more,
much more efficient process.
The President: Well, part of the reason
it's so important, as you know, is because of the economics
of producing flu vaccines, is,
it's not a big moneymaker for the drug companies.
Eric Chen: Right.
The President: If we can come up with
computer models that narrow the RMB --
Eric Chen: Right, by making
it much cheaper, you can actually --
The President: You can actually start producing
them and adapting them to --
Eric Chen: Right, and making
them cheaper for the people --
The President: That's exactly right.
This is really important.
This could end up being the start
of saving millions of lives, huh?
Eric Chen: Hopefully.
The President: That's, you know, the, now,
do you also like, are you like a champion
lacrosse player and --?
Eric Chen: No, I fence, though.
The President: You fence?
(laughter)
The President: All right, I'm such an underachiever.
(laughter)
The President: You're going to do great.
Eric Chen: Thank you.
The President: I'll be on the lookout for this,
because we're spending a lot of time, you know,
trying to puzzle this out, so --
Eric Chen: All right.
The President: All right?