Hi,
It sounds like you are planning ahead for next year. This is a great time to start.
It is definitely acceptable to request donation of supplies from a company and you can acknowledge the contribution. Some companies will help students doing science projects and some do not, but it won’t hurt to ask. Since you are starting early, you might also have time to apply for a grant that would pay for supplies. I am familiar with the Intel Fair, but not JSHS. Normally participants in the Intel Fair are winners from the regional fairs, so you would need to enter you local school science fair, then the school district fair, and then the local county fair. Usually, only 2-3 students per county are chosen to participate in the Intel Fair. For JSHS, you might want to find out who the STEM coordinator is in your county and contact that individual for more information.
Is there a local laboratory that does research in retinoblastoma? If so, it would be helpful if you could find someone in the lab to help you as a mentor. This is going to be a challenging project, so it will be helpful to have someone who could help you learn the laboratory techniques and it will be helpful to have access to a laboratory. If you don’t know, look at the authors of some of the research papers you have found for your background reading, and make a note of those that are located close to you.
Have you reviewed the information on doing an advanced project from the Science Buddies Website? The suggestions for finding a mentor should be very helpful to you at this point.
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... ndex.shtmlWhat will you be doing for your project? What types of supplies do you need? Sometimes with science projects, it is necessary to adapt the project to the resources that are actually available.
Donna Hardy