When Emily O'Reilly was called on to the Taiwanese stage, she didn't understand the words in Mandarin surrounding her name.
"I knew that I had won something," said O'Reilly, who was one of two students selected to represent Canada at an international science fair in early February.
The key words she was missing? First place.
"That feeling was so great but it wasn't actually until the whole award ceremony had ended and I had been taken off to go and sign an acceptance paper for my award that I actually found out that I had won first place."
The 17-year-old College Heights Secondary School student was selected first in the category of health and medicine for a project that examined apricot kernels for their ability suppress stomach ailments.
After pitting more than 100 apricots, concocting a method to extract the cyanide, spending dozens of hours in the lab and a couple hundred hours in research and analysis, her project found the kernels could in fact hinder bacterial growth.
She said she loved explaining her project to other students and judges.
"They were definitely really intrigued and interested to hear more about it and it was really nice at the fair because it was not so much that they were judging you, but they were actually really interested to hear about your research, and to learn more about it and to have a really nice discussion."
It was a busy couple weeks for O'Reilly during the fair, which ran Feb. 4 to 10.
"When we weren't at our displays or doing something at the science centre they'd have tours for us to do the sightseeing."
One of her favourite stops was Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world.
Her group made it to the 89th of 101 floors.
"That was an unbelievable view to see," she said. "The story behind it it was that, if they had 100 floors that that would represent 100 per cent, so they want to exceed the expectations by doing 101 floors."
O'Reilly, who has the gold medal to prove it, is used to exceeding expectations.
On Friday, she included another notch to her name when she was recognized as Prince George's Youth of the Year.
O'Reilly didn't know she was nominated until right before the ceremony.
"It was a really nice surprise to find out."
Along with her academic achievements, O'Reilly also sits as vice-chair on District 57's student advisory council.
"I just really like getting involved in my school and my community and it's just a really big honour to have that title," she said of the award.
O'Reilly plans to attend the University of Northern B.C. in September so that she can continue her research.
