During Aimee Guo’s freshman year at The Hockaday School, her grandfather died from lung cancer. The loss shifted Guo’s view of healthcare and led to her interest in medicine. She began to think about how she could use her skills to help people in the medical space.
Guo started building her coding skills in middle school, but the computational aspect did not interest her. An internship at the University of Texas at Dallas Intelligent Robotics & Vision Lab taught her how to combine her coding skills with the healthcare space, jumpstarting her love for biomedical engineering.
This love brought her to an internship at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied cancer treatment. Her project created a tool focused on improving the accuracy of radiation therapy for pancreatic cancer patients.
“I just feel like this experience was really cool because not only did it broaden my view on cancer treatment, but I learned so much about the research process,” she says. “It’s been a lot of trial and error. I guess you can say it’s frustrating at times, but I’ve learned so much.”
Photography by Gabriel Cano
The frustration paid off. On Jan. 8, the Society for Science named Guo as one of the top 300 scholars in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search. The search is one of the oldest and most prestigious STEM competitions for high school seniors. Scholars were chosen based on their promise as STEM leaders, demonstrated through submissions of original independent research projects. As a chosen scholar, Guo and her school will receive $2,000.
Guo’s interests extend beyond just biomedical research. When she was 6 years old, Guo picked up the piano, a hobby she has carried on for the past 12 years. Last year, Guo received an honorable mention for her piano solo at the Texas Music Teachers Association Conference. Her passions for music and science go hand in hand in her desire to give back to her community.
Two years ago, Guo completed an internship focused on how music therapy could help patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia.
“It broadened my perspective on how seniors who are struggling with memory care issues could really benefit from listening to music, but also being able to see how much music can transform and build communities,” she says.
The internship inspired her to start the music volunteer organization Mind-full of Music. As president, Guo organizes student volunteers in the Dallas area to perform music in senior homes or memory care homes. She says the organization has built caring and supportive relationships not only among the musicians but between the students and the residents of the homes they visit.
“It’s been really rewarding to see seniors almost anticipating our next performance and coming up to us being like, ‘When are y’all coming back? I’m really happy to hear your music,’” she says.
Giving back to the community is at the center of almost everything Guo does. In her free time, she has participated in hackathons and app-building challenges, which she says she enjoys because they allow her to use her knowledge of coding for social impact.
Guo’s time at Hockaday has also helped her discover new interests. She says her favorite class she has ever taken was an engineering design course during her first semester of senior year. She was able to construct a functioning robotic arm in the hands-on class.
“One of the things I’ve found to be really important is being able to combine your passions with something that can give back to your community,” she says. “I think that’s a really important part of your work or research or anything you end up doing.”
