An ʻIolani School senior recently took home a top prize at the nation’s oldest science research competition for high school students.
Logan Lee traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier this month for the Society for Science's Regeneron Science Talent Search, where he presented his research on mosquitoes.
The Conversation spoke with Lee, starting with where his love for science began.
“In sixth grade, I got to do this science project with my friend, and we were looking at how the concrete in canals affected the growth of invasive algae further down in the bay," he said. "I think learning about the power of science in solving these issues was what sparked in my mind, like, wow, there's so much we can do with this and there's all of these possibilities that we can run with."
Lee's research into sterile male mosquitoes earned him a spot as a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search. His interest in mosquitoes grew from his love for Native Hawaiian forest birds and his desire to explore the threat mosquitoes pose.
“The mosquitoes are causing the extinction of our Native Hawaiian forest birds and scientists are currently using that mosquito control technique, the Wolbachia IIT (The Wolbachia Incompatible Insect Technique) where they've released reproductively incompatible male mosquitoes. These male mosquitoes are male so they can't bite or spread disease, and they're also reproductively incompatible, so they can't reproduce,” he said.
However, Lee shared that this could be a problem with this method since the mosquitoes are grown in a laboratory.
“They're not necessarily the most fit mosquitoes that you're going to release, and you want them to compete with these wild males. You want them to compete for the places with the wild females so that they won't reproduce. And so I was looking at ways that maybe affect their fitness… So if we took those microorganisms from the wild and we gave them to the library of mosquitoes, what kind of changes would we see,” Lee said.
Lee transplanted a wine microbiome that the mosquitoes live in and found that it quickened the rate at which mosquitoes developed by 18%. He also looked into their survival through something called a chill coma.
“When you have these mosquitoes in a laboratory, you have to get them to the wild somehow, and often they do that by putting the mosquitoes into a chill coma so they can transport them safely," he told HPR. “If the mosquitoes aren't able to survive that chill coma, you're not able to release them. So I found that the transplants are able to survive or improve the rate at which mosquitoes survive.”
This is the second year that an ʻIolani School student has won a top national science prize. Lee took home fourth place and a check for $100,000 as a finalist in the national competition on March 11.
“I definitely wasn't expecting it, because meeting everyone, hearing about their incredible research projects, like getting fourth was kind of like, I don't think I ever really considered it, to be honest," he said. "The real prize of being a Regeneron STS finalist is not the prize at all, but the experience."
Lee wants other students to know that if they see problems in their communities, they can find solutions.
"Having that passion for improving a situation or solving a problem — I think that as long as you have that passion and that interest, you can really go anywhere with it. So if you have a issue in mind, you see something that you care about, just take that and run with it, see where it goes."
This interview aired on The Conversation on March 25, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
