Hearing his name called in a room filled people was an astonishing feeling for Keaton Roberts.
His jaw was on the floor as he realized he was selected first place against other competitors for something he’s worked on for almost a year.
“It was just such a rush, everyone’s clapping for you, there’s cameras in your face and it’s like a huge room in the McCormick Place,” Roberts said. “It was an incredible experience.”
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Roberts, a senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, won first place and a gold medal in the biology/microbiology category at the 49th NAACP ACT-SO for research he’d been doing for nearly a year.
The NAACP’S Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics is a yearlong achievement program that recognizes the work of high school students from across the country in more than 30 categories that span the arts, business, science, technology, engineering, math and humanities.
During the four day competition, Roberts, 17, was able to connect and network with students from across the country.
“It was really incredible to see how much talent there really is, especially in my community, like people coming together from throughout the country to demonstrate their talent,” he said.
Roberts spent months on his research project that looked at the effects of a synbiotic, a combination of beneficial gut bacteria (probiotics) and the nutrients that support them (prebiotics) on fat metabolism using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (roundworm).
His findings demonstrated the potential of synbiotics as a future therapeutic approach to obesity while also identifying methodological considerations for future research.
“What inspired me to research this topic was the increasing prevalence of obesity and the search for alternative solutions to address this growing health issue,” Roberts said. “I wanted to explore therapeutic interventions that could provide similar benefits to current medications while reducing their cost and potential side effects.
“Since probiotics and prebiotics have also been gaining attention, I wanted my research to have a strong real-world connection, which led me to investigate synbiotics.”
But he was working on the project before he even considered submitting it for the competition. He said he began at the start of his junior year last year as part of his AP research class, where students look into original research projects they’re interested in under the guidance of faculty mentors.
He decided to join the competition in February as it had some of the same requirements, such as writing a scientific paper and giving a presentation.
Though he’s already won this competition, he has plans to work on another research project and enter it in other places.
He spent this summer interning at Rush University Medical Center and gaining experience in different divisions while also working on another research project where he and others created a pre-biotic smoothie to help with Parkinson’s disease symptoms, he said.
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This upcoming year, he said he’s essentially taking the same AP research class a second time and hopes to finish his next project earlier to submit it to more competitions.
“I think it would be super cool if I was able to go to (the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair) next, which is like the most prestigious science competition for high schoolers,” Roberts said.
As he’s nears his high school graduation, he aims to major in biology at a prestigious universities like Yale University and Brown University. He’s also considering staying in state and studying at the University of Chicago.
“I did all my college visits last summer with my dad and I think those were the ones that definitely align the most with me,” he said.