Image: Helen Wiersma
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Overview
More Finalist Profiles
Her finalist year: 2000
Her finalist project: Developing a new way to control weeds
What led to the project: Helen Wiersma grew up in the 1980s and '90s in Okeechobee County, Fla., where her family owned a cattle ranch. One day she was out in the pasture riding around with her grandfather when she saw him take out his shovel to dig up a noxious weed called the tropical soda apple.
"I was like, 'Grandpa, why don't you just spray it?' But he told me couldn't afford to do it," she says. The available herbicides were expensive and didn't reach the roots of the plant anyway.
So Wiersma decided to see if she could invent a better way to control these weeds. As a high school freshman she started doing research at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences's Southwest Florida Research and Education Center, about two hours from her home. Her father, grandfather and uncle took turns driving her there and back until she got her license.
But all that commuting paid off. She figured out that by combining very small amounts of traditional herbicide with an opportunistic bacterium called Erwinia carotovora, she could damage the tropical soda apple enough that the bacteria could then attack the roots, and hence control it more effectively than herbicide could alone. She entered her project in the 2000 Intel Science Talent Search and was named a finalist.
Wiersma was thrilled to do so well. "I never thought someone from a little rural hick town could actually compete with the bigger city high schools," she says.
The effect on her career: She went on to earn a double major in biology and chemistry at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee, and spent her summers interning in the infectious diseases research division at Merck, the pharmaceutical company.
All this research just cemented her love of hands-on science. "Science is really one of those disciplines that when you discover something, you're the first person who's ever seen that. I found that really cool." She decided to go to Stanford University for graduate school after her 2004 graduation to continue her research.
What she's doing now: These days, Wiersma is in her fifth year of a biochemistry PhD program, studying enzyme evolution—that is, how different proteins achieve specificity for different reactions. She plans to finish in two years, though it's been a tough journey.
During her second year of grad school, Wiersma fell into a severe, yearlong depression. Multiple antidepressants didn't help, and she had to be hospitalized. She had no idea what was wrong with her.
Then, about two months after she recovered, she had her first manic episode and "everything clicked," she says. "It was a relief, actually. I knew what was going on." Doctors diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, a disease that affects around 4 percent of Americans to varying degrees, and is characterized by dramatic and often debilitating mood swings, with periods of normalcy in between.
But just because Wiersma had a name for her disease didn't mean that she was in the clear. Over the past three years, she's had to take about a year and a half off of school, often in two- to three-month chunks. "I'm usually involved in some kind of hospitalization or outpatient program until I get stabilized again," she says.
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16 Comments
Add CommentPour boiling water on weeds to kill them. Cheap, easy, no chemicals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf it was as simple as pouring boiling water on the plant then I think she would have experienced her father doing that, instead she saw him try and dig the plant out by hand. As the article mentioned, reaching the deep roots is the problem, the boiling water may be too cool to be effective by the time it reaches them. Perhaps a concentrated stream of water or steam would work, but I have some doubts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMonoculture creates soil deficiencies of which weeds are symptoms. Bio-dynamic permaculture "ecosystems" solve this problem, or at least make it such that weeds are not a problem. We don't need better chemicals, potions, and poisons to pour into the earth. We need better agricultural techniques.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeeds are not just a problem of monoculture agricultural systems. Weeds can invade complex native ecosystems and destroy biodiversity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn fact some of the species promoted by permaculture can be serious environmental weeds.
The Kadir-Buxton Method can cure mental illnesses in thirty seconds, and allow Helen to get on with her job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. If you spill hot water on your foot, you wont be worrying about the weeds!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. The hot water option for weed control is impractical beyond the back door. It is NOT cheap, and it is not environmentally friendly.
3. I like Wiersma's discovery...its neither a chemical extreme nor an organic extreme, but a bit of both. An intelligent and balanced approach to a problem keeps one out of hot water.
1. If you spill hot water on your foot, you wont be worrying about the weeds!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. The hot water option for weed control is impractical beyond the back door. It is NOT cheap, and it is not environmentally friendly.
3. I like Wiersma's discovery...its neither a chemical extreme nor an organic extreme, but a bit of both. An intelligent and balanced approach to a problem keeps one out of hot water.
1. If you spill hot water on your foot, you wont be worrying about the weeds!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. The hot water option for weed control is impractical beyond the back door. It is NOT cheap, and it is not environmentally friendly.
3. I like Wiersma's discovery...its neither a chemical extreme nor an organic extreme, but a bit of both. An intelligent and balanced approach to a problem keeps one out of hot water.
1. If you spill hot water on your foot, you wont be worrying about the weeds!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2. The hot water option for weed control is impractical beyond the back door. It is NOT cheap, and it is not environmentally friendly.
3. I like Wiersma's discovery...its neither a chemical extreme nor an organic extreme, but a bit of both. An intelligent and balanced approach to a problem keeps one out of hot water.
Sorry, could you repeat that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMs Wiersma,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like your name. My mother was Wierda and probably like you from the northern province of Friesland in The Netherlands. I was born in Leeuwarden and lived there for seven years, before my family immigrated to the USA in 1960.
Daag
Auke
I have found that 50mg of P5P works well for bipolar disorder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is a derivative of Vitamin B-6(pyridoxal-5-phosphate).
I have found that 50mg of P-5-P works well for Bi-Polar Disorder. It is a derivative of Vitamin B-6.(pyridoxal-5-phosphate).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have found that 50mg of P-5-P works well for bipolar disorder. That is a deriva
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have noticed that P-5-P works well for Bipolar Disorder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisP-5-P is a derivative of Vitamin B-6. That is (pyridoxal 5-phosphate)
get tested at www.pyroluriatesting.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this