Julielynn Wong - One of Canada's Best and Brightest

Article by Ann Dowsett Johnston, May 24, 2004. MacLeans.

The magazine had asked universities across Canada to nominate their brightest stars, both current students and recent grads under the age of 30.  The top 25 were picked from more than 400 young achievers.

The following is the magazine's profile of Julielynn, who is 29 and a medical researcher.

Malarie stalks 40% of the world's population - 2.5 billion people - and kills about 3,000 victims a day.  In fact, there are more acute cases of malaria each year than tuberculois, AIDS, measles and leprosy combined.  "It's a preventable and treatable disease" says Julielynn Wong, a third-year medical student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.  "But despite control efforts, there has been a resurgence in recent years."

In 2002, Wong, who has garnered more than 10 academic awards totalling almost $ 55,000, attended the International Space University in Pomona, California.  Wong was the lone medical student in a group of 53 peers from 20 countries who collaborated on a project called HI-STAR - which stands for Health Improvements through Space Technoligies and Resources.  Their idea: malaria could be squelched by using telecommunication satellites to relay data on the disease, global positioning systems to correlate cases with their exact location, and remote-sensing equipment to track rainfall and humidity that affects mosquito breeding.

Last year, Wong and a fellow ISU student presented the idea in Vienna to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.  Wong continued her research into HI-STAR last summer under NASA's Healthy Planet program, showcasing the project at a number of conferences in Germany last fall.

Now, the UN's Office of Outer Space Affairs has endorsed HI-STAR, and the European Space Agency has asked to see a proposal for a pilot project.

"It's hard to say what motivates me to help other people," says the Toronto native, recently nominated for the Canadian Medical Association award for excellence in health promotion.  She has recently received word that she is the sole medical recipient of the 2004 Canadian Medical Association Award for Young Leaders.  "I just feel that when you give of yourself, you always get back so much more".

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