High School Student Wins Award for Amazing Math and Science Work

A high school student from Boulder, Colorado has won a special award for her amazing work in math and science. Hanbei Bao is a student at Fairview High School who loves solving hard math problems and studying space. She won the CBS Colorado Future Leaders award, which gives her $1,000 and recognition on TV. The award goes to students who do great work in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Bao is really good at math competitions. She competes in big contests like the American Regional Mathematics League. She also takes part in the American Mathematics Competition Series. For three years in a row, she has made it to the hardest test called the American Invitational Mathematics Examination.

The math in these contests is different from school math. It includes something called 'number theory,' which is about working with numbers in special ways. Bao says this kind of math helps you understand what numbers 'feel like.' Most schools don't teach this type of math.

Bao loves teaching math to younger students. She works with middle school kids through a program called the Colorado Math Circle's After School Program. She wants to show them that math can be fun and exciting. A teacher inspired her when she was in the same program as a younger student.

Besides math, Bao also loves physics, which is the science of how things move and work. She taught herself a hard physics class called AP Physics using Khan Academy on the internet. She spent three weeks at the University of Pennsylvania learning about physics experiments. After that experience, she felt so excited that she started her own research project.

Now Bao is doing research about something called primordial black holes. These are special black holes that might have formed long ago in space. She uses computer programs to study how these black holes change over time. Her work shows that big black holes shrink slowly, but small ones shrink very fast.

Bao started something called Boulder Brewing STEAM to help other students learn about science careers. She invites real scientists to come talk to high school students. These talks help students see what science jobs are really like. They also show that scientists are normal people, not just 'hard-core nerds.'

After high school, Bao plans to go to college to study physics and math. She wants to keep learning until she gets the highest degree possible, called a PhD. She dreams of becoming a research scientist because there is so much about space that people still don't understand.