Zoe Kanter

Zoe Kanter is a rising Senior at Lincoln High School in Seattle, Washington. Zoe is the president and founder of her school’s Keystone Club, which focuses on community service. She has led the club to develop connections with local nonprofits, organize service events, and coordinate fundraisers. She is also an active member of Lincoln4ClimateJustice in which she co-leads trainings and gathers signatures for local bills and initiatives related to climate and social justice.

Zoe enjoys playing soccer on both her school’s Varsity team and Seattle Celtic. She is also a Youth Ambassador for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center, helping to coordinate their annual Teen Action Fair and other community events. Zoe loves the poetry community she has found at Youth Speaks Seattle in their SPOKES program.

At ISB, Zoe worked with her partner Honey Suwanchote and her mentors Jake Valenzuela and Chris Deutsch. Zoe and Honey researched orthologs of a gene previously identified as important to carbon resilience in the species T. pseudonana. They grew three diatom species in high carbon and low carbon environments and created a protocol for conducting the steps necessary for RT-qPCR, a process that analyzes the expression of the gene and its identified orthologs. They also used R coding to create data visualizations. Zoe and Honey also assisted Kristine Prado-Casillas, an undergraduate student, with her project creating a competition assay of three different diatom species under different carbon concentrations. Finally, they helped with the development of high school science curriculum.

Zoe has loved biology from a young age and is so grateful for the opportunity to work at ISB alongside her fellow interns and mentors. Feel free to reach out to her with any questions at zoe.kanter@yahoo.com