Note: due to unforeseen circumstances caused by Covid-19, the evaluation and selection process for the 2019 Pioneer Research Journal was delayed. We thank all of the parents, teachers, and – most importantly – students, for your patience during this process.
Pioneer Academics’ Research Program is the world’s only online research program providing US college credit for exceptional secondary students. Today, the program officially announces the 23 original research papers that will be featured in the 2019 Pioneer Academics Research Journal. Each paper was nominated by a mentoring professor and underwent a rigorous faculty peer review evaluation process. The Pioneer Research Journal is a collection of outstanding research that depicts the extraordinary scholarship that high school students across the world can achieve.
Each nominated paper was considered by the Pioneer Research Journal Committee, a panel of 41 esteemed professors from top American undergraduate and graduate institutions. This panel determined which papers were selected for the Journal. The selected papers constitute the top 4% of papers in the 2019 academic year of the Pioneer Research Program.
This nomination represents not only an academic achievement but also a personal one for many of these Pioneer Scholars. Their research papers underwent Pioneer’s academic oversight and the Journal’s thorough review process, and emerged as remarkable scholarly works. This major accomplishment highlights the research skills mastered by these Pioneer Scholars. Through Pioneer, today’s high school students now have access to the academic resources needed to reach their true potential, breaking political, geographic, socioeconomic, and personal barriers while doing so. Justine Kum, a Pioneer scholar from Dulwich College in Seoul, South Korea who is now attending University College London, testifies that Pioneer helped her “discover new areas of interests that I never considered before, and most importantly, more about myself and my capabilities as an individual.”
Annalise Selden, a student from Pine Crest School in Florida, USA who is now studying at the University of Chicago, also notes that the multifaceted nature of Pioneer’s Research Program helped her develop a variety of important skills: “In the process of writing, I not only learned interesting content in one of my favorite subject areas but also learned better time management, organization, and research methodologies.” She added that publication in the journal serves as an important first step toward her future professional goals, and that the Pioneer Research Program reinforced that research is a meaningful future direction for her: “My dream is to be a professor and to have my research published at this stage will help establish my track towards this profession. Through Pioneer, I have learned how much I love to research and discover more about the world.”
For many of these students, Pioneer Academics is only the first step in a lifelong journey of scholarship and research. According to Yixuan Zhao, an incoming first year student at Cornell University who graduated from the Shenzhen College of International Education in Shenzhen, China, “It was definitely thrilling to hear that my paper was selected to be published in the Pioneer Journal, which is the first time I am able to share my thoughts and findings with aspiring scholars around the world.”
The nominated research papers include research across academic disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields. Research papers by students from six different countries were published: United States, China, India, Bangladesh, Estonia, and South Korea. Two students are still attending high school, and the remaining 21 have enrolled in universities in the US, the UK, Canada, and China. The following is a list of the students whose work was selected for publication in this year’s journal along with their high schools, titles of their research papers, and their research concentration:
Aditya Waddodagi
High School: Greenwood High International School, India
University: Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.
Pioneer research area: International Relations
Pioneer research concentration: Political Risk and Prediction
Pioneer research topic: Sri Lanka Risk Analysis
Annalise Selden
High School: Pine Crest School, U.S.
University: University of Chicago, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Art history
Pioneer research concentration: The Medieval Mediterranean: Confluence of Cultures
Pioneer research topic: The Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina: Norman Sicily’s Diversity and Artistic Style Under Roger II
Cheng Qian
High School: TsingHua University High School, China
University: TsingHua University, China
Pioneer research area: Mathematics
Pioneer research concentration: Introduction to Combinatorics and Graph Theory
Pioneer research topic: An investigation in Tournaments with Bidirectional Arcs
Dihan Mashroor Niloy
High School: DPS STS School Dhaka, Bangladesh
University: University of Toronto, Canada
Pioneer research area: Philosophy
Pioneer research concentration: Descartes’ Meditations
Pioneer research topic: The Impossibility of Certainty: A Critique of Rene Descartes’ ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’
Elis Soord
High School: Pearson College UWC, Canada
University: Brown University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Chemistry
Pioneer research concentration: Food Science
Pioneer research topic: Would Limiting Animal Product Consumption Be an Effective Public Health Strategy? The Role of Industrial Farming in the European Union as a Catalyst for Foodborne Disease Resulting from Antimicrobial-resistant Bacteria.
Fengyi Ou
High School: Branksome Hall, Canada
Pioneer research area: Economics
Pioneer research concentration: The Politics of the Gig Economy: Entrepreneurship, Technological Innovation, and Politics
Pioneer research topic: Adverse Selection in the Chinese Healthcare System: Reducing Information Asymmetry to Optimize the Utilization of Hospital Capacity
Guankai Zhai
High School: Jining Confucius International School/YK Pao School, China
University: Cornell University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: STS
Pioneer research concentration: The History of Information
Pioneer research topic: Cockpit Instruments: a Historical Study of the Ergonomic Considerations in Aircraft
Hui Lan
High School: International School of Beijing, China
University: Barnard College, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Biology
Pioneer research concentration: The Gut Microbiome
Pioneer research topic: Research Proposal: The relationship between gut microbiome, hormones, and acne vulgaris disease presentation
Irene Chen
High School: Leland High School, U.S.
University: Cornell University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Engineering
Pioneer research concentration: Nanotechnology
Pioneer research topic: A Monte Carlo Simulation of the Single-Electron Transistor
Justine Kum
High School: Dulwich College Seoul, South Korea
University: University College London, UK
Pioneer research area: Education
Pioneer research concentration: Foundations of American Education
Pioneer research topic: Social Media and its effects on the Foreign Language Curriculum for Undergraduate University Students
Ruochen Jin
High School: The Woodlands High School, U.S.
University: The University of Texas at Austin, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Culture Studies/ Ethnomusicology
Pioneer research concentration: Mapping Culture Through Music
Pioneer research topic: A Blended Culture: Greater Houston Area’s Native American Children’s Contest Powwow
Sahana Prasanna
High School: Monta Vista High School, U.S.
University: Rice University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Music Theory
Pioneer research concentration: Analysis of Musical Rhythm
Pioneer research topic: Human Intuition, Perception, and Execution of a Five-Beat Versus a Seven-Beat Rhythmic Cycle
Sarah Liu
High School: Kent School, U.S.
University: Brown University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: History
Pioneer research concentration: The Scientific Revolution in Early Modern Europe
Pioneer research topic: Science in Women’s Cosmetics of 17th Century Europe
Shuyu Chen
High School: WHBC of Wuhan Foreign Languages School, China
University: Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Art History
Pioneer research concentration: Leonardo Da Vinci
Pioneer research topic: Comparative Analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s Santa Maria Della Neve and Huang Gongwang’s The Remaining Mountain
Sumin Yoon
High School: School for the Talented and Gifted, U.S.
University: Rice University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Anthropology
Pioneer research concentration: Anthropology of STS
Pioneer research topic: The Invisible Culture of Pain and The Opioid Crisis
Tianhao Li
High School: Beijing National Day School, China
University: Northwestern University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Business
Pioneer research concentration: Making a Difference in Entrepreneurship: Thinking outside the barrel to create integration experiences for global entrepreneurial community development
Pioneer research topic: Comparison of Determinants of Entrepreneurial Intentions in China and the USA
Vikhyath Mondreti
High School: The International School Bangalore (TISB), India
University: UC Berkeley, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Computer Science
Pioneer research concentration: Networks: from Searching the World Wide Web to Slowing the Spread of Infectious Diseases
Pioneer research topic: A Complex Networks Approach to Analysing the Erdos-Straus Conjecture and Related Problems
Xinshi Ma
High School: BASIS International School Shenzhen, China
University: Duke University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Economics
Pioneer research concentration: The Political Economy of International Development
Pioneer research topic: An Institutional Analysis of the Military’s Role in the Egyptian Economy
Yixuan(Skye) Zhao
High School: Shenzhen College of International Education, China
University: Cornell University, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Biology
Pioneer research concentration: Modeling Blood Flow to Fight Cardiovascular Disease
Pioneer research topic: Computational Modeling and Simulation of Vulnerable Plaque in the Femoral Artery
Yuting Huang
High School: Culver Academies, U.S.
University: UCLA, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Biology
Pioneer research concentration: Cell Biology
Pioneer research topic: Macrophage migration inhibition factor: A cancer promoter, potential prognosticator and chemotherapeutic target
Zhanhao Zhang
High School: Shen Wai International School, China
Pioneer research area: Business
Pioneer research concentration: Making a Difference in Entrepreneurship: Thinking outside the barrel to create integration experiences for global entrepreneurial community development
Pioneer research topic: The Impact of Entrepreneurial Activities and Innovation on the United States’ Economy from 2011 to 2018: Drawing Statistics from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and Other Organizations
Ziqian (Alexa) Jin
High School: The Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University, China
University: The University of Chicago, U.S.
Pioneer research area: Mathematics
Pioneer research concentration: Fibonacci Numbers and Visual Proofs
Pioneer research topic: Tetranacci Identities with Squares, Dominos, and Hexagonal Double-Strips*
Ziyang Zheng
High School: The Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University, China
University: University of Oxford, UK
Pioneer research area: Mathematics
Pioneer research concentration: Coding Theory and Cryptography
Pioneer research topic: Blockchain: Building Path to Utopia
* This paper is under consideration for publication in another journal
Doing research is commonplace.
