Meet Shrikari Punjala, the student who turned eggshells into crystals

Representative Image of eggshells being processed to extract calcium carbonate for bacterial growth experiments in a laboratory (AI Generated Image) A seventh grader from Palatine, Illinois, has turned eggshells into calcium carbonate crystals and used them to investigate whether the mineral can affect bacterial growth. Shrikari Punjala, a student at Quest Academy, is one of 30 finalists in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. Her project, “How Do Calcium Carbonate Crystals Affect Bacterial Growth?”, was inspired by her research into Sporosarcina pasteurii, a bacterium known for its role in calcium carbonate biomineralisation. She extracted calcium carbonate from eggshells using acetic acid, then tested the crystals against four bacterial species grown on agar plates. Society for Science reports that bacterial coverage after the crystals were added was 55% for Aeromonas sobria, 65% for Sporosarcina ureae, 66.25% for Escherichia coli and 71.25% for Bacillus subtilis. The organisation says the results showed that the calcium carbonate inhibited bacterial growth.Punjala joins the 2026 Junior Innovators Challenge top 30The Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innov...