People Editor
Aspiring scientist sophomore Sara Niemeyer is making her time at Los Gatos High School worthwhile. With her various activities including Advanced Science Research (ASR) and choir, Niemeyer is a true master of multitasking.
Among Niemeyer’s never-ending plethora of activities is LGHS’ ASR class. Joining the class for the first time this year, she was thrilled to see what it had to offer. She explained her initial interest in signing up, saying: “I thought it’d be really interesting if I could research a project that the school didn’t force me to research. I wanted to do something on my own, learning wise.”
For her year-long project, Niemeyer decided to research ways to lessen the symptoms of diabetes, while focusing on cheaper and accessible solutions to lowering body fat levels in relation to the disease. Niemeyer chose to research this particular topic because she witnessed people she knows suffer as a result of insulin price increases, unavailability, and overall symptoms from the disease. In short, her project process has consisted of “testing the effects of caffeine and scopolamine on body fat in C. elegans [microscopic worms that model humans in research projects].” She added, “I decided to use caffeine because it has been proven to have metabolic effects…However, if I were to give caffeine out to people…they could develop a tolerance, so it would no longer work [to decrease their body fat]…so my whole project was trying to find a chemical that would make caffeine’s effects last longer.” Throughout her trials, Niemeyer put in countless hours of work making solutions, observing worms under a fluorescence microscope, and examining the body fat of those worms.
Outside of ASR, Niemeyer enjoys many other activities such as choir — which she has participated in since kindergarten. She recalled her favorite memory with the LGHS choral department as the Anaheim Disneyland trip last April, and thoroughly enjoyed the Carnegie Hall trip this spring break. Niemeyer also challenges herself through her course load, which includes AP European History and Trig PreCalc Honors. She particularly enjoys her Honors English class, and shared: “we have a lot of good discussions because I’m in seventh period. I feel like we’re a lot closer than other English classes [because of that].” Currently, Niemeyer is working on her Plato Project for her English class, for which she is creating a cinematic documentation of events in her everyday life. In the scarce free time that she gets, Niemeyer enjoys listening to music, and spending time with her cats Pinky Pie Princess (a name given by young Niemeyer) and Artemis. In the future, she hopes to be a scientist of some sort, and is particularly interested in astrophysics.
Whether she is making scientific discoveries, singing in choir, or doing one of her many other commitments, Niemeyer is always a supporter of all those around her.
Categories: People