HOT SPRINGS — Aarohi Sonputri of Little Rock hasn’t quite graduated high school yet, but she’s already racked up impressive accomplishments in the classroom and beyond.

This week, the 18-year-old senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts will be in Los Angeles taking part in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest high school science fair.

Sonputri, a native of Kathmandu, Nepal, will be at the fair as a result of research she took part in beginning in 2022 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, where she studied a way to prevent future cancer cell growth in diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Her research led to an attempt to manipulate a DNA structure called G-4 Complex that would prevent the cancer’s cell growth and was published in the peer-reviewed Columbia Junior Science Journal.

And there’s this: Last summer Sonputri spent more than a month in Mithila Janakpur in the Mahottari District of Nepal’s Madesh Province where she led design efforts for building community toilets, conducted health workshops for women and children and distributed feminine hygiene products.

Sonputri, who graduates Saturday, has also volunteered as a virtual assistant on multilingual infor

mational pamphlets and collaborated on writing grants for Tibetan Refugee Centers in Kathmandu with CARE Nepal; she teaches English to Afghan women through the group Leaders of Tomorrow and volunteers as a tutor through other groups.

“I have never met a student who is more sincerely dedicated to changing the world as Aarohi,” said Dr. Whitney Holden, a life science specialist and instructor of excellence at the school for math, sciences and the arts who was Sonputri’s on-campus adviser for her work at UAMS. “And ‘changing the world’ isn’t just some future goal or dream of hers, it is something she has already done for many women and children in Nepal and Afghanistan who have benefited from her hard work and compassion.”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in early April and Sonputri is in the Munro conference room in the Creativity and Innovation Complex at the school for mathematics, sciences and arts. She’s done with classes for the day and is talking about her life in Arkansas, what it was like working in the UAMS lab and traveling back to Nepal to help women and children there.

Sonputri was around 8 when she came to Little Rock from Nepal with her dad, Prakash Karn; mom, Kumari Karn and younger brother Aritra. Her last name differs from her parents, she says, because “in Nepal we have caste associations with last names, and my family didn’t want that associated with us here — caste associations should be outlawed by now. So my last name is essentially made up. It’s my dad’s nickname, ‘Son,’ and ‘putri,’ which means daughter in Sanskrit.”

Her brother’s last name, Sonputra, combines their father’s nickname with ‘putra,’ meaning son, she notes.

The transition to life in the United States wasn’t completely seamless.

“I think I was too young to comprehend everything, but it was hard getting used to speaking English all the time,” she says. “Especially informal English, because we learned very formal British English in Nepal.”

She first attended Forest Park Elementary and went to Lisa Academy before enrolling at the residential math, sciences and arts school in Hot Springs as a junior.

“The main thing for me was the amount of opportunities here,” she says. “I would see articles about students doing great projects here and going abroad and doing all these fun things. On top of that, it’s known for its academic rigor as well.

“But I think the biggest thing was the huge research opportunity.”

The Life Science Capstone Class at the school for math, sciences and the arts has been placing students with UAMS labs since 2019, Holden says in an email. As part of Sonputri’s capstone project, she began working in the lab of Dr. Samantha Kendrick, an assistant professor at UAMS and an associate member of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, in November 2022. She was teamed with UAMS graduate student Kennith Swafford, who served as a lab supervisor.

Sonputri was inspired to explore medical research in part by her mom, a researcher for the Centers for Disease Control.

“I would read her papers and not understand a single word,” she says with a chuckle. “It prompted me to want to essentially reach that standard set by my mentors and my mom.”

The speed at which a vaccine was produced during the covid-19 pandemic was also an inspiration for her to dive into research, she says.

“Covid definitely changed my perception on research. The people on the frontline were the researchers who were able to develop a really effective vaccine in very little time.”

She would go to the UAMS lab on Wednesday and Friday and spent the first few months observing and shadowing Swafford. Over time she was given more tasks.

Her research, which was funded by a grant from the Department of Defense, focused on CARD11, a cancer-promoting gene in B-cell lymphoma cells. She targeted a secondary DNA that had not been studied before and was was able to identify a molecule that stabilizes part of the DNA structure within CARD11 called a G-quadruplex and prevents additional cancer growth.

The process involved meticulously screening more than 750 chemicals to identify those best at stabilizing the G-quadraplex structure.

“Another high school student may have been satisfied with a dozen or so chemicals screened,” Holden says, “But Aarohi kept going back to the lab throughout her summer break to complete the entire project above and beyond what would normally be expected.”

“That she was able to take this molecule and validate it was really exciting,” Kendrick says. “No one has really shown that within this gene a structure forms, so we were the first ones to do this. And because it is so novel a structure, no one has shown it’s a targetable gene. That her contribution to our ongoing work here helped us demonstrate that we can potentially target this gene is significant.”

Holden called Sonputri’s results “the single most impressive and professionally presented set of results I have seen from any research student in my over 10 years of mentoring high school students.”

Sonputri will be a co-author of the work when the project is published, which could be by the end of the year, Kendrick says, adding: “She’s a quite remarkable, young, rising academic and I’m really excited to see where she goes.”

Sonputri’s research has resulted in recognition on several fronts, including being named among the 300 semifinalists, and the only one from Arkansas, in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, which is presented by the Society for Science.

She qualified for the International Science and Engineering Fair after winning the West Central Regional Science Fair in February in Hot Springs and was third in the Best in State individual category at the Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Running parallel with her interest in science is her desire to help provide a better life to women and children in Nepal.

In October 2022 Sonputri applied for a grant with the Center for Integrated Rural Development, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization officially recognized by the government of Nepal. She received $17,000 from the group and worked from late May through mid-July last year in the underserved Mahottari District, where her grandmother is from.

“When I would go back as a kid, I could see the problems,” she says. “It’s a very patriarchal society, so women’s health issues are pushed down. It’s really painful to see women not have the access to things that they deserve. It’s really impoverished. There are high rates of infanticide. Most babies don’t make it because there are infectious diseases going around because of poor sanitation and hygiene practices.”

The $17,000 grant included $80 a night for Sonputri to stay at a hotel while she was in Nepal. Instead, she slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of the center’s office.

“It’s completely unreasonable to spend $80 a night in Nepal to stay somewhere, so I used the accommodation money that I had to spend on children nearby, getting them school supplies.”

(It should be noted that she didn’t tell this part of the story until she was reminded of it by a school representative present during the interview.)

Oh, and while this energetic multitasker was in Nepal volunteering and sleeping on the office floor, she was participating online in Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Medical Summer Program.

Sonputri has continued to do data work for the rural development center and says that the hepatitis A rate in the area has gone done almost 17% since she was there.

“I love those people,” she says of the women and children she met. “I still email the [center’s] director and ask him to let them know I am thinking about them. It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

When she is not studying, Sonputri does Kathak, a form of Indian classical dancing.

She has a habit of doing schoolwork while watching shows like “The Big Bang Theory” on Netflix and also likes horror films, particularly “The Conjuring,” “Hush” and the “Insidious” series.

It will be a busy week for Sonputri. She finishes up at the science and engineering fair in Los Angeles on Friday and will rush back in Arkansas for graduation on Saturday.

She has been accepted to several colleges including the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, New York University and others, but still isn’t sure where she will end up.

“I don’t know where I will go, but I have until the end of June to make my decision.”