Yahya is a member of Knowledge Masters, Academic Team and TechBowl. He also enjoys playing tennis and maintaining his father's garden. His future career is as a medical researcher. "In spite of tremendous advances in the field of medicine, there are still diseases which cannot be cured completely; I want to find a cure for them and reduce human suffering."
His brother is his mentor. "He encourages and motivates me to pursue advanced topics in math and science," says Yahya.
Yahya first became interested in his research topic when a relative was put on a strict seafood diet because of a heart problem. After finding heavy pathogen loads in fresh seafood from retail stores, Yahya investigated natural and organic solutions for reducing the pathogens. He had three objectives: to determine whether six common herbs and spices were effective against three common pathogens; to test whether herbs and spices reduced pathogens when they were incorporated into antibacterial washes; and to determine whether the three most effective spices could be used in storage washes to retard pathogen growth for three days.
Yahya worked in a supervised laboratory to determine the most effective three spices. He then made antibacterial washes of five different concentrations for each spice and conducted multiple tests using fish samples. He concluded that the washes removed at least 50 percent of the pathogen load and that most of the concentrations reduced at least 80 percent of the pathogens. The storage wash also retarded growth for three days and kept the fish fresh.
