Student taking ‘superbug’ work to Canada Wide Science Fair

By BRENDAN MILLER on May 30, 2025.

bmiller@medicinehatnews.com

Grade 12 Medicine Hat High School student Fatema Riaz dreams of leading discoveries to treat “superbugs” or bacteria that has become resistant to multiple antibiotics, making them extremely difficult, or even impossible, for doctors to treat with standard medications.

Riaz has been passionately working on antibiotic resistance research throughout her high school career and says more research is needed on how current medications are able to fight mutating pathogens.

“In order to combat this issue, we need to understand how our current medications work,” explains Riaz. “For antibiotics, a lot of times we find them in nature and we aren’t totally sure of every exact way that it works. We know some of the major ways. But anything we can get to understand how these medicines are actually working at the fundamental level is a chance we have to improve or potentially even create new antibiotics with those same kinds of mechanisms.”

During the summer Riaz participated in a six-week research program at the University of Lethbridge and worked under professors at the university’s lab conducting tests that included how effective certain antibiotics are against different bacterias and ribosomes.

The experience catapulted her into the world of university biochemistry.

“I like it a lot, I love it,” said Riaz. “It’s amazing, the staff trusts you to use this very expensive equipment and it’s just so fascinating to see the different things that you learn in school, actually, happen in real life. Like when you do an experiment and you can actually see what you’ve learned in application.”

This weekend Riaz will travel to 2025 Canada Wide Science Fair held in Fredericton, N.B. to present her experiment titled “Antibiotic Stimulated Ribosomal Subunit Joining” as one of two representatives from the southeast Alberta zone.

The project looks into discovering how current antibiotic supply works.

“We’re basically testing a bunch of conventional antibiotics to see if they have this new mechanism of action, or what we call modality. So we are trying to see if they can stop these ribosomes from forming, because if antibiotics can stop the ribosome from joining completely, then it can stop protein synthesis within the bacteria.”

Riaz says she has spent more than 200 hours working on the project, which could lead to medical advances in the future.

The science fair brings the brightest minds from across the country together for a five-day event that includes nine rounds of judging sessions, and typically attracts around 10,000 spectators.

“Even though it’s definitely very competitive, there’s a lot of camaraderie throughout with all the students,” says Riaz, who will be representing the region at the national fair for the second consecutive year. “Getting to the Canada Wide Science Fair is already an achievement in itself, so I think it kind of takes the edge off the competitiveness.”

Riaz will present her data on two large display boards that will include microscopic photos of her research.

The science fair is closed to the public during the first two-days for judging, then opens up for the final three days.

Last year Riaz represented the region at the CWSF in Ottawa with her project exploring advancements which AI doctors assistants could add to the medical field in diagnoses and treatments.

This year Riaz is also being recognized as Medicine Hat High School’s valedictorian. In Grade 11 she aced both her Grade 12 Biology 30 and Math 30-1 diploma exams, and scored a 98 per cent on her Chemistry 30 diploma exam.

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