An everyday family question became a chemistry project for Sai Sri Valli Mogilineedi: could an antacid release its active ingredient more slowly under conditions like those found in the stomach?
The question grew from her grandfather’s experience with heartburn. When she was an eighth grader at Mountain View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Sai explored the idea with a lab model made from calcium alginate beads. This September, the project helped earn her a place among 30 finalists in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, a national research competition for middle-school students.
Sai is now a student at Cumberland Valley Ninth Grade Academy, her school district reported Sept. 23. The Society for Science’s finalist profile lists the project as “A Novel Controlled Release System for GERD Drugs Using Immobilization Techniques.” It describes an effort to explore a controlled-release antacid, not a finished medicine.
For the experiment, Sai crushed antacid tablets containing calcium carbonate and dissolved them in water at two concentrations. She compared two concentrations of sodium alginate, a substance derived from algae that forms a gel, then dropped the mixture into calcium chloride. The process created small calcium alginate beads.
She placed the beads in solutions with different pH levels and observed how quickly they changed the solution’s pH. The finalist profile says the beads released calcium carbonate more slowly in an acidic solution comparable to stomach acid, while releasing their contents more quickly in a basic solution.
The pH scale indicates how acidic or basic a liquid is, giving Sai a way to compare the beads under different conditions. She also compared different concentrations of the antacid and alginate rather than relying on a single mixture. The profile describes the overall pattern but does not publish numerical measurements or say how long a release lasted, so the reported result stays specific to those prepared solutions.
That result describes what happened in the prepared solutions. It does not show that the beads relieve heartburn in people or that they are a proven treatment for gastroesophageal reflux disease. The project is a laboratory model, and the published descriptions report no human testing. The distinction keeps the accomplishment in view: a student designed and tested a chemistry question, while any medical use would require much more research.
The competition offers another chance to explain that work. The Society announced the 30 finalists on Sept. 16, selecting them from the Top 300 Junior Innovators announced Sept. 2. The group represents 17 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Other projects on the Society’s roster examine kelp-forest recovery and whether hydrogels could reduce wildfire risk, illustrating the range of questions students are taking into the same competition. They will travel to Washington, D.C., for Finals Week from Oct. 23 through Oct. 28. Judges will evaluate the research alongside communication, creativity and collaboration during team challenges. The Society says every finalist receives a $500 award and will compete for more than $100,000 in prizes.
The national finalist roster lists Sai’s school project alongside work by students from across the country and Puerto Rico. The roster’s profile connects her research to an ordinary family concern, then lays out the materials and measurements behind it. The school district’s Sept. 23 announcement confirms that she completed the work last year as an eighth grader and is now representing her school community at the national event.
Science is one part of her life. The Society profile says Sai enjoys Science Olympiad and ecology, plays violin and oboe, performs Kuchipudi, a form of Indian classical dance, and volunteers with Caitlin’s Smiles to assemble craft kits for children in hospitals. She hopes to become a surgeon.
Her project began with someone close to her and turned that concern into a question she could examine with materials, comparisons and measurements. The result is not a medical breakthrough; it is a carefully bounded student experiment that has earned Sai a place among the national finalists, where she will share her work with other young researchers.
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