When Nalani Miller was in eighth grade, her biology teacher wouldn’t support her enrollment in a more advanced course. “I really wanted to go to honors biology, but she refused to recommend me,” Miller recalls. Her teacher’s opinion was that Miller wouldn’t be able to excel in science, that she wasn’t driven enough to do well in honors biology. But that didn’t discourage Miller. “Her thinking that I wouldn’t do well in science, that lit a fire for me to prove her wrong,” she says.
That same year Miller’s speech teacher also refused to recommend her for honors speech, telling her she wasn’t very good at public speaking. That lit another fire. Eighth grade was a tough year but it didn’t scare her off. She ended up being the secretary of the speech team.
Miller just finished her senior year at Kamehameha High School on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. She is now poised to start college at the University of Rochester with a dream of becoming a biologist and finding a cure for cancer. “It’s a tier 1 research institution, which would allow me to work in the lab starting from my freshman year,” she says. “I’m sure it’s the right choice for me.”
Targeting cancer is personal for Miller because she has had many family members and friends affected by the disease. “I wondered if I could be able to help them,” she says after watching relatives on her father’s side succumb to breast cancer. Cancer, it turns out, occurs in high rates among Hawaiian people.
Last year at the AISES National Conference in Oklahoma City she was a pre-college poster winner. The title of her project was “Ptychosperma macarthurii (MacArthur palm) Significantly Inhibits the Growth of HeLa Cervical Cancer, RPMI-8226 Myeloma Cancer, and MCF-7 Breast Cancer.” A short time later she received some more bad news. “I found out my grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer,” she says.
[Miller is] poised to start college at the University of Rochester with a dream of becoming a biologist and finding a cure for cancer.
With these personal experiences, Miller is more and more determined to tackle cancer. The summer before her senior year she landed a paid internship at the University of Hawaii where she tested an experimental drug for lung cancer. She was the only high school student involved. She made the most of this experience by picking the brains of the other interns, who were junior and senior college students. “I was able to ask the college students for advice,” Miller says. They told her to take advantage of every opportunity but also to make time for college fun. “It was a really amazing opportunity!” she says. “I worked with actual doctors and PhDs, and I learned under them.”
Miller’s father is Native Hawaiian, and while he didn’t get a college degree, he still started his own company despite, she says, people telling him he wouldn’t make it. Her mother, who is from the Philippines, worked hard to become a civil engineer. “I like to believe I take after them, in that sense,” says Miller. She certainly mirrored their work ethic throughout high school, keeping a frantic pace that included participating on the Speech and Debate Team. Plus, she ran track and field and cross country.
Miller learned how to manage her time by watching her parents. “When I was in seventh grade my dad started his own steel structural company,” she says. “I would see them working on plans, and I would be helping them manage time. My parents were always on me to not procrastinate.” They warned her that if she left her work to the last second, she would be stressed out and the quality of work would suffer.
That skill has enabled her to compete at a high level. This year, out of 477 competitors, she placed in the top five at a statewide science fair. With that achievement she qualified for a free trip to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). For that competition she updated her AISES poster and renamed her project “Ptychosperma macarthurii Seeds Inhibit Growth of Ex Vivo Cancer Cells.”
All this energy, curiosity, and dedication comes from a little girl who used to dance hula, sing songs in Hawaiian, and play the ukulele. Today if Miller ever doubts herself, she just turns on Beyoncé’s song “Run the World (Girls),” and she’s back on track.
And that track leads to college. “I like to surround myself with friends who are like me, who have a focus,” she says. “I like to believe I’m ready to go to college. I will try my best! I will work really hard and take advantage of every single program that comes my way.”
