Positive people in Pinecrest : Alexa Fein

Miami Palmetto High School senior Alexa Fein is president of Tutoring for Tomorrow,
the student run non-profit tutoring service originally founded by a Palmetto student ten
years ago.

“It’s been passed down from one student to another,” she says. “We offer affordable
tutoring for K-12 students and including Advanced Placement classes.”

Half the fee payment goes to the tutor and the other half is given to the community.

“We recently started a community grant program where any student can apply to us for
a community service project,” Fein says. “We’ve supported Volunteering Miami, we
have helped them host their volunteer fair. And a project for water wheels in India.”

Other projects they have donated to are grant programs, homeless shelters, the Palmetto Math Club for competition fees and calculators and the Palmetto Alumni Association Scholarship program.

Fein started out as a tutor and then moved onto leadership. She was treasurer last year
and is training a new treasurer now that she’s president. TFT hires approximately 30
tutors a year and helps 50-100 students with tutoring.

There is a Google form that anyone who needs a tutor can fill out. The tutoring is
available year-round.

Fein didn’t do much tutoring herself this summer. She attended a six-week program
sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Education in Boston to do research for the
Research Science Institute in Boston.

“It was the greatest summer experience I’ve ever had,” she says.

The students were housed at MIT. She was assigned to a lab at Harvard Medical
School that studied multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

“We were studying how cancer runs in families,” she says. “People who have a first
degree relative have a greater chance of getting it.”

She was given genomes from a large family that had multiple myeloma, and through data, she looked for genetic mutations associated with this cancer. It was all done through computer analysis.

The family had five million mutations. And she was able to find one that was found in
the family members that had cancer that were not found in the rest of the family.

“We did find one candidate gene that was observationally associated with multiple
myeloma in this family,” she says. “It would require further investigation. And controlled trials.”

She also took classes in biology and physics. The attendees did four weeks of research
and then they prepared a paper and did a presentation about their project. Her project
was chosen as one of the top five and she received a $1000 award.

Fein could return to the lab next summer. It would be an in-person opportunity – it could
not be done remotely.

The experience made her realize she likes the biology research world, or analyzing
data.

“Data analysis or computer science are interests of mine,” she says.

Computer, math, and research science schools top her college list. She is applying for
early admission to Harvard and regular admission to MIT, Princeton, the University of
Miami and the University of Florida.

Depending on which school, her major could be math, computer science, or biomedical
engineering.

At Palmetto, Fein is co-president of the Science National Honor Society. She’s participated in Envirothon three times. The team has gone to the international competition twice, and one of those times they won third place.

She’s vice-president for tutoring for Mu Alpha Theta, co-vice-president of Student Organ
Donation Advocates and co-president of Women in Technology.

“We teach technology skills, how to use Excel, and how to code in basic languages,”
she says. “We show girls there is a place for them in technology.”

Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld

 

 

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