Quick Shot

Yifan Kong (right) was named a semifinalist in the 2014 Intel Science Talent Search. Kong, advised by Dr. Stephen Craxton (left), is a student at Webster Schroeder High School. She optimized beam pointings for proton-backlighting targets at the National Ignition Facility for an experiment proposed by MIT’s Chikang Li. The Science Talent Search is often referred to as the “Junior Nobel Prize” and is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition. Since its inception in 1989, LLE’s summer research program has produced 32 semifinalists and 4 finalists. Application forms for the 2014 program will be available in early February and can be found here.