İlayda Şamilgil, who came first with her work for the “First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics” contest last year, has been selected to take part in a research program at NASA.
The Sözcü daily reported on Tuesday that Şamilgil, who graduated from MEF private high school in İstanbul last year, started studying at Cornell University in New York this year and will be part of a project led by Professor Mason Peck of Cornell, who also works as NASA’s chief technologist. The project is related to the planned development of rockets to be sent to Mars.
In an exclusive interview with Sözcü over the weekend, Şamilgil said that she feels very happy to be part of an important project that could be of great significance to humanity.
Şamilgil also noted that she had obtained a provisional patent for her project, which is about developing a cheap, fast and easy system for determining the percentage of water in liquids, and had been waiting for a company to show interest in her prize-winning idea.
Şamilgil’s project was ranked first among around 5,000 others.
Although she had previously entered her project into a competition organized by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), she was unsuccessful in that competition.
Stating that she had dreamed of being a scientist since childhood, Şamilgil said: “I advise young people to pursue their dreams. They might encounter some obstacles, but they can overcome any obstacles if they really want to.”
