Last Saturday I learned a lesson about telephoning teenagers before noon - they're already busy. The teens were at basketball, soccer, volleyball, dance class, work. I wanted to check in with Ballard High School students currently in Genetics about their preparation for the Seventh Annual Student Biotech Expo, in which they will be 55 students out of 300, just one school out of 11. Presented by the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research, with Amgen as lead sponsor, the Expo will take place Monday, March 5 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue.

The event is billed as a unique science fair in which students are encouraged to use creative means to convey scientific depth. I've been involved with Expo for seven years now; the advisory group never really stops working on the logistics and funding needed to bring together 300 students in a one-day competitive event. Until the buses start arriving in Bellevue, the students are usually just names from endlessly updated Excel spreadsheets as we try to match students and interest with scientist advisors.

The day of the event goes so quickly, as judges interview students and students mingle, admire, cheer for tap dance performances and music. Months of work on research papers, web sites, molecular models, dances, plays, original research...and then the rush for the buses right after the award ceremony. After so many years, and in the dark days of November when I need 10 more advisors in just two days, I think about skipping a year. Then I get hooked yet again by each student's story.

"I am a migrant student. I spend my summers working in the fields of Central Washington picking apples to help improve my family's financial situation. I am the oldest child in my family and, hopefully the first one to graduate from high school and pursue higher education." These are the first lines of a Royal City student artist's statement regarding his sculpture. "I tied a rope around the apple to symbolize unity among scientists and researchers that are trying to help meet agricultural challenges and consumer needs of the 21st century..."

Hooked again by the story, even if the journey for a Ballard student doesn't seem as great as the one from Royal City. The French horn player who composed a piece on psoriasis, the student with a genetic defect on her foot planning to dance, the junior with diabetes teaming with a diabetes researcher,... I still hear the song in my heart transplant song in my head and remember Ph.D. scientists in awe of a molecular model. I am not a scientist, perhaps that is why I love the Student Biotech Expo so much, because students use stories, models, videos, web sites to explain science to people like me, and what they create is amazing and often beautiful.

Not every student follows through; some don't contact their advisor, or their advisors don't respond, they change topics, they change categories, they wait till the last minute. But there are also students who take the contact with a laboratory scientist in their laboratory and just go. Alissa Aron did just that last year in the Research category. She won first prize at the Expo, the Silver Award at State and went on to the 57th International Science and Engineering Fair in Indianapolis. Ballard students often push themselves in new directions, using oils for the first time, designing a web site, finding experts who can answer their questions about hemochromatosis when their advisor cannot (that would be me).

Next Monday some 50-plus Ballard students will board buses to travel to Bellevue. Every one of them will stand by their project and face multiple interviews by biotech professionals; some will be nervous, some overconfident. The students I talked to will be there, Adrienne with her painting on a neurological disorder, Charlie with his web site on cystic fibrosis, Evangeline with her children's book and Maya with her multimedia project. The Ballard students may sweep some categories; they may not. Some of the advisors from Amgen, ZymoGenetics, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, Puget Sound Blood Center, and many other organizations will attend. The students may make their advisors proud, or they may not. After all they are just teenagers. But even now, step dancing teams are practicing patterns based on genetic mutations and students are painting, writing, welding, designing web sites. And I know that next Monday I will be hooked again and again and again by all those stories.

Information about the Seventh Annual Student Biotech Expo is available at www.nwabr.org/studentbiotech/ The event is open to the public from 9 a.m. to Noon.