Inspiring young minds

How often are high school teenagers approached by doctoral students asking them questions about scientific techniques, research and analyses? Probably not very often.

However, that’s the scenario Lillianne Brown found herself in when she spent two months in Chennai, India, this summer at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation as a 2014 Borlaug-Ruan intern, which was also in conjunction with the World Food Prize Foundation.

“There were two people who were doing their PhD dissertation defense while I was there, and they had no idea how to use a technique, and so it was really cool to be able to learn this technique, which is relatively simple to understand once you study it for awhile,” Brown said. “But, it was cool just to know that I’m doing the same work as PhD students, some stuff that people who are getting their PhD and don’t even know how to do.”

Brown was the guest speaker at Clarke Community High School Wednesday, Oct. 15. The event was hosted by Osceola Big Chief FFA.

Accomplishments

Brown, a senior at Iowa City High School, has also worked within the Water4Crops project, focusing on the biotreatment of industrial waste water for agricultural irrigation.

For the past four years, Brown has also been a member of the team Zero Waste Composting, working to change the systems currently in place to reduce the amount of organic waste in landfills.

This year, Brown won the 2014 United States Presidential Environmental Youth Award for her work on organic waste diversion.

During Brown’s presentation to the students, she went in depth about her research gained from her time spent in India.

Cultural exchange

Once Brown finished discussing her scientific analysis, she told the audience about her cultural experiences of living and working in a different country.

These are a few of her observations about daily life in India.

• Traffic is terrifying with rickshaws, buses, bikes and various other motor vehicles.

• The food is delicious and spicy. She got to drink coconut water out of a coconut that the top had been hacked off by a machete.

• The malls are huge. Brown said Jordan Creek is about five times smaller than a mall she visited in India. However, most shopping is done at the street shops on the side of the roads.

• She went to the beach several times because Chennai is near the southeastern coast of India.

“Here in the U.S., we typically swim at our beaches. In India, they don’t,” Brown said. “It’s particularly because the tides are huge. ... A lot of people die because they get swept out. That’s also a cultural thing, they don’t want to show skin.”

She added, fair and carnival attractions are set up on the beach for entertainment. There was also food advertised as “American Sweet Corn” that was sold on the beach.

• Lizards and spiders are everywhere. This is something foreigners just have to get used to.

• Brown conformed to the traditional dress wear of saris, and the stores where the cloth is sold are quite huge.

• Public transit can be extremely stressful, especially for someone who grew up in Iowa.

“Buses there stop for about 10 seconds and you then you have to kind of like jump on and hope that you get on all the way,” Brown said. The buses don’t have doors, either, she added.

• People always eat with their hands, and are quite graceful with their technique. However, when Brown was on site for her research, she was given a spoon. Once out in the community, though, she had to eat with her hands.

• Since Brown has white skin, locals assumed she was some kind of celebrity.

Favorite part

After Brown’s presentation, there was time for a question and answer session. One student asked Brown about her favorite part of her trip to India.

“I think I’m torn between enjoying my research, just because I was working with like-minded people who were all working toward the same cause, as well as just the cultural experience,” Brown said. “You don’t realize — you hear about there being problems in third-world countries and you read about it in the textbooks, but you do not realize what it’s actually like until you’re walking down the slums of India.”