That’s So High School

Now she’s a freshman at Yale University studying chemistry and environmental studies, but not that long ago Melissa Baranay was working in the Environmental Molecular Science Institute (EMSI) at Notre Dame on her project for the International Science and Engineering Fair. She was just a high school student.

During her junior and senior years in high school, Baranay worked at Notre Dame with Professor Jeremy B. Fein (center), director of EMSI and the Center for Environmental Science and Technology, and graduate student Dan Alessi. “I never really thought about studying environmental science in college, and I never considered a career in research, but that has all changed,” she says.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that she did quite well in the competition with her project, “A Survey of Cadmium Adsorption onto Soil Samples.” Baranay placed first in the physical science division at the state level. At the international fair in Albuquerque, N.M., she received a U.S. Army award for the “most outstanding science project” in the environmental science category.