Clara de Castro, 17, has made a significant scientific discovery in a University of Kentucky lab.

 

A junior at Sayre School, de Castro has been working in Dr. Robin Cooper's UK lab, mostly on evenings and weekends, dissecting fruit flies.

 

Through her work she has developed a new technique that enables researchers to study the effects that drugs have on the hearts of Drosophila, the genus of small flies often called fruit flies.