Bogna is a member of the science club and is her school's student council president. She plays the flute and participates in a number of sports, including soccer and water polo. She also enjoys volunteering at a local veterinary clinic. Bogna says she hopes to become a biochemist someday so she can develop treatments to "help people with cancer, leukemia, and [other] incurable diseases."
Her mentor is Professor Ian Williams, a glaciologist and an ardent supporter of Bogna's interests and pursuits.
In her studies of global positioning systems (GPSs), Bogna discovered that agribusiness is incorporating GPSs and other remote sensing systems to manage soil quality and consistency across large fields. This led Bogna to wonder if this technology would not only produce higher crop yields but also be a more environmentally friendly method of farming.
Bogna collected soil and vegetation samples from a field near a river. After the samples were analyzed at a lab, maps were developed to illustrate concentrations of different nutrients in the soil across different areas of the field. Many disparities were found, especially in elevated areas. Based on these results, a farmer could create a prescription map that tells how much fertilizer needs to be spread in certain areas. This would enable a farmer to fertilize selectively, rather than applying a uniform amount of fertilizer across the entire field. Hence, Bogna concluded that this type of analysis saves money on chemicals, reduces the amount of chemical runoff into the nearby river, and prevents plants from being overfertilized, all of which are ultimately beneficial to the environment.
