Sanger teen invited to meet Obama at White House Science Fair

When Sanger High sophomore Talie Cloud started working on her science fair project two years ago, she didn’t suspect that it would take her to the White House Science Fair and a meeting with the president.

Cloud’s experiment, which studied the effect of Momordica charantia, also known as bitter melon, on the reproductive rate of fruit flies, won first place at the national 2015 Future Farmers of America Agriscience Fair.

“It was super exciting to know that I’ll have the opportunity to do this, and I’m really looking forward to it,” the 16-year-old said about her upcoming trip to the nation’s capital. “I just learned about it last week, so it was really abrupt.”

President Barack Obama hosted the first White House Science Fair in 2010 and will host the final fair of his administration this year.

“If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House,” Obama said at the first White House Science Fair in 2010. “Well, if you’re a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too.”

Cloud, who has spent her entire life in Sanger, is one of more than 100 students invited to this year’s fair but the only student from the Central Valley. The students range in age from 11 to 19 and had projects involving robots, computer programs, solar power and other technology.

Cloud’s trip starts off with a flight to Washington, D.C., on Monday, dinner with the FFA national adviser on Tuesday and then the White House Science Fair on Wednesday afternoon.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, scheduled a Wednesday evening meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan for the Sanger High student and her father, Tal Cloud, a Republican Party stalwart. He said he will be traveling to Washington, D.C., with his daughter but only the students will get to meet the president.

Her mother, Hillary Cloud, said she thinks that is “really great, because it really honors the kids.”

Talie Cloud said meeting the president and seeing the inside of the White House are what she is looking forward to most. It will be her second trip to Washington after a class trip in eighth grade, but her first visit to the White House.

She started work on her science fair project in August 2014. She competed at the state FFA fair in April 2015 and and at the national fair in October.

Cloud won first place at both competitions.

For her experiment, Cloud sliced bitter melon – a green, edible pod vegetable with a rough, uneven surface – and then ground up the seeds. She then created the fruit fly medium concentrations, which included a control, a 2.5 percent group and a 5 percent group.

“I placed 10 milliliters of the food, which already had the bitter melon mixed into it, and added 5 grains of yeast,” Cloud said. She then anesthetized the flies and placed three males and three females into each vial and repeated the steps for three 14-day generations.

The goal, she said, was to determine if the vegetable could be used as an agricultural insecticide.

The common fruit fly is not considered a major agricultural pest. But a relative of the fruit fly, Drosophila suzukii, is estimated to cause $511 million worth of damage annually as a pest of soft-fleshed fruit. The fruit fly’s reproductive function and method of invasion resemble those of Drosophila suzukii, so it was used as an alternative test subject, Cloud said.

Cloud found that, compared to the control group, the 2.5 percent concentration resulted in roughly a 72 percent reduction in the number of fruit flies born, climbing to around an 85 percent reduction for the 5 percent concentration.

“I heard about bitter melon from a friend who said that it was like a major part of his diet and he was telling me basically old wives’ tales about bitter melon,” Cloud said. “And how it could be used for so many things in the Chinese culture.”

Cloud has participated in science fairs since she was in sixth grade. She said her mother, who works as a math/science instructional specialist at Sanger Unified, and father have nurtured her interest in the natural world.

Her interest in science was apparent at an early age, her mother said. “Even when she was very little, she wanted every little book about all the trees and plants in our backyard and would go out identifying them all,” Hillary Cloud said. “She’s just been that kind of kid.”

Cloud is interested in studying environmental science and hopes to attend the University of California, Davis, where her sister Bryn, 19, is studying chemistry and computer science, or Stanford or Cornell.

“I just enjoy the discovery, the experimenting, the not knowing what you’re going to get,” she said.

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Sanger teen invited to meet Obama at White House Science Fair."