Anastasia Nast Roda

PENNSYLVANIA

Anastasia Nast Roda, 18, of Lancaster, explored the impact of New Jersey's Oyster Creek nuclear plant on its surrounding ecosystem for her Intel Science Talent Search environmental science project. Anastasia designed and built her own apparatus to study water quality and the benthic, plankton, biofouling (living organisms that degrade underwater surfaces) and microbial communities inhabiting the reactor's intake and discharge creeks as well as a control creek. She concluded that water quality was changed (especially temperature, pH, velocity and turbidity) and organism populations were severely altered in both reactor creeks. Anastasia has already earned five varsity letters at Lancaster Catholic High School and is a Division One college goalkeeper recruit in field hockey. Honored with many science fair awards, Anastasia plans to attend Harvard and aspires to be an environmental scientist and lawyer. She is the recipient of two EPA grants to write and illustrate a booklet for vacationers about protecting New Jersey's Barnegat Bay, where she has conducted independent research since seventh grade. Anastasia is the daughter of Joseph Roda and Dianne Nast.