A local high school student is celebrating her silver medal for her research to help put an end to diabetes.
Sohila Sidhu, a Grade 12 student at Assumption College Catholic High School, won silver at the 2024 Canada Wide Science Fair.
She was among nearly 400 students at the fair that was held last week in Ottawa, and won silver in the Senior category for her research on stem cell therapy to treat diabetes.
Her project focuses on a method of converting urinary stem cells into beta pancreatic cells which could be used for stem cell replacement therapy to treat Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
Sidhu also received a Youth Can Innovate Award, which recognizes her project as innovative and original, and demonstrates a practical application in advancing society.
She says she was very happy to win silver.
"It was definitely nerve-wracking first going in and seeing everyone's amazing projects. But, as the judging went on I think I became more, and more confident in my own project, and eventually at award day it was just amazing."
Sidhu says she wanted to start this research after watching her mom be diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
"I had to watch as she pricked herself everyday to test her blood glucose levels, and how disease is affected by mental health. It really touched me in a way that like... how can such a widespread disease have such a temporary cure? I was compelled to make a difference."
She explains what's next for her.
"I'm doing this research at Oakland University and I really want to continue to see if I really could make pancreatic cells, and then utilize those pancreatic cells to create organoids for maybe even organ transplantations, which would be a permanent cure. But at the University of Windsor I'm continuing in neuroscience."
She will be studying neuroscience at the University of Windsor next year and hopes to go to medical school in the future, where she can continue her research, and hopefully conduct human trials with her method.
In 2022, Sidhu won a bronze medal at the Canada Wide Science Fair for her work on developing a prototype for an artificial pancreas.