The sounds of students, middle school and high school age, sharing their research fills the halls of the convention center. After an immense amount of preparation, senior Kaitlyn Tran presents her solo research project to judges of various backgrounds.

While at the Greater Austin Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which took place in late February, Tran won first place in the earth and environmental sciences category. Alongside her placement, Tran also was awarded with the Association for Women Geoscientists Certificate, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Certificate and many others.

“Honestly, at my core, I would say I’m a humanities student, but I’ve recently started to like science research,” Tran said. “In the past, I didn’t really gravitate towards STEM, but I think being curious and going deep into anything you’re remotely interested in will always bring you to something that’s fulfilling.”

Alongside her core classes, Tran is vice president of the environmental club, member of the art club and is trying to start a science fair club. Outside of school, she enjoys hanging out with friends, making art and doing yoga.

“I really like doing yoga because it’s about engaging your mind, body and your spirituality, and I think those three elements are so important as they all need to work together,” Tran said. “Yoga means unity, and that’s just something I want to embody in a lot of what I do. I like doing yoga because it teaches you discipline in all areas.”

According to Tran, going through Wikipedia and various online articles has been a major influence for her interest in science and other subjects. An article by the Texas Monthly was Tran’s main introduction into her topic.

“[My project was about] the local Lime Creek Quarry, which was mined for nearly 200 years,” Tran said. “Protective geologic layers that normally provide filtration for groundwater below were destroyed. What made that worse was the city’s plans to bring in a bunch of urban development directly onto site and what that would do was bring more contaminants to the groundwater below. Essentially what I did with my research project was I modeled what zones would be at most risk under these different post mining land use scenarios.”

Over the prior summer, Tran took a free geology class for high school students at the University of Texas at Austin. She used the knowledge she gained to use geographic information systems that allowed her to get the data for her project.

“[The festival] was really fun,” Tran said. “I loved just talking with real scientists and real professionals. The fact they were curious about what I was doing, even though I was a high schooler, was just so much fun. I look forward to more experiences like that.”

When asked to describe Tran’s character, her physics teacher Mr. Christopher Voss said she is a very smart and diligent worker. Voss describes her as somebody who always comes to tutorials when she doesn’t understand something in class.

“Her ability to answer questions and have really solid knowledge on all of that stuff that she did was really impressive,” Voss said. “I think she will take with her a lot of the knowledge that she gained from the science fair, doing the research project, coming up with an idea, doing the research itself and then taking it to the fair and answering all those questions. I think all of that is a really great experience to go into college with and hopefully even to a career.”

After high school, Tran has goals of earning a doctorate in either environmental science or hydrogeology with plans of being a researcher. For the rest of high school, she has goals of continuing to develop her skills and make more friends.

“I just want to make people feel valued and know that they’re awesome and they should just pursue what they want to do,” Tran said. “There’s no limitation other than their mind that’s stopping them from obtaining that goal.”