Roy plays the saxophone, enjoys soccer and track and is on the robotics team at his school. He would like to become a robotic engineer, because he "would enjoy designing, building, programming and testing robots for a living."
Thomas Edison is Roy's science hero. "I live by his words: 'Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.'"
Roy knew he had found a topic for this year's science project after reading an article in Popular Science magazine about NASA's research on how light-emitting diodes speed wound healing. He decided to work with common brown planaria and hypothesized that light-emitting diodes could be used to speed up the regeneration of the planaria.
Roy began his experiment by cutting each planaria in half and carefully recording its size and shape. He exposed the planaria to a light-emitting diode device daily for 60 seconds. The control planaria received no treatment. Roy found that the light-emitting diodes did aid in the regeneration process of planaria and that those treated twice daily demonstrated even more development than those treated once daily. He attributes the success to the interaction of light energy and molecules within the cell, which created cellular activity.
