Congratulations to 10th grade Pulaski Academy high school students Akshara Chevireddy and Nyera Ali and their University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences mentor, Dr. Reine Protacio. Nyera and Akshara won two prestigious awards for their research project on DNA sites that help to position meiotic recombination in the genome. They earned second place in the Senior Division, Microbiology section of the 2024 Central Arkansas Regional Science Fair, which was held on March 1 at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. They subsequently earned second place at the state-wide Arkansas State Science Fair, which was held at the University of Central Arkansas on March 29 and 30. Akshara and Nyera conducted their award-winning research in the laboratory of Dr. Wayne Wahls in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UAMS. This research and training opportunity was supported in part by a research project grant (GM145834) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health.