I got the Comp. Neuro research position through cold-emailing at the start of 10th grade. This wasn’t a high school research program - I work with undergrad, grad, and postdocs as I’m the only high schooler in the lab. My mentor made me first author because I did all of the work for my projects with little input from others I guess? As the bullet said, I’ve published 2 first-author publications, 1 co-author, and I forgot to mention but 1 first-author and 1 co-author are pending publication.
For my position at Penn State, my mentor recommended I reach out to the profs at Penn State as I had a research proposal she knew they would be interested in. So I worked with them on another project, which was published and profiled by NVIDIA.
My NPO is officially registered as 501(c)(3). My sister and I run the org, so we did all the paperwork regarding that. One of our family friends is involved in law so she guided us through the process as my parents aren’t really involved.
Regarding FTC, it’s a robotics competition, and my school has a team that participates in it. Our team has 3 groups (mechanical, programming and outreach), and I’m the head of the programming group. Our team has also been one of the top globally since I came.
I know this may seem like a lot, but I really enjoy all of these activities and I’m not trying to spam for college lol. And yes, I get at least 7 hours of sleep haha.