A Singapore-born teenager who recently moved to Canada won a national science award on Tuesday for her groundbreaking work on the anti-ageing properties of tree pulp, officials said.
Janelle Tam, 16, won the $5,000 award in the 2012 Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada for showing that cellulose, the woody material found in trees that enables them to stand, also acts as a potent anti-oxidant.
“Her super anti-oxidant compound could one day help improve health and anti-ageing products by neutralising more of the harmful free-radicals found in the body,” Bioscience Education Canada said in a statement.
Tam’s work involved tiny particles in the tree pulp known as nano-crystalline cellulose, which is flexible, durable, and also stronger than steel.
Tam, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, chemically bound NCC to a well-known nano-particle called a buckminster fullerene, or buckyballs, which are already used in cosmetic and anti-aging products.
“The new NCC-buckyball combination acted like a nano-vacuum, sucking up free radicals and neutralising them,” said Bioscience Education Canada.