Youth : News for the 18-and-under crowd : TUSTIN : High School Junior in Research Project

Marie Wang, a junior at Tustin High School, will assist doctors in laboratory research at UC Irvine this year.

Wang was recently accepted into the Southern California Student Research Consortium and the National Science Foundation Young Scholars Program, which placed her at the university.

She will be assisting in a UCI department of pharmacology research project involving the effects of estrogen in producing the hormone melatonin, officials said.

As part of the program, Wang will write a research paper on her findings and present it at meeting of the Southern California Academy of Sciences this spring.

--COMPILED BY JOHN POPE AND MIMI KO