CARMEL — Three Carmel High School students are on a special kind of field trip this weekend.

Senior Angela Ma is competing in the individual portion in the Siemens Regional Competition in Math, Science and Technology on the Notre Dame campus in South Bend. Juniors David Zheng and Michael Luo are competing in the team of the regional. The students will prepare today and then compete on Saturday.

There are five entries in each the individual and team contests.

All three students have already earned $1,000 scholarships from the Siemens Foundation but are competing for additional scholarship money. Winners will advance to the national finals in New York in mid-December.

Ma will make a presentation of her project, “Multiplex Detection of MicroRNAs.” Her field is biochemistry and her project has the potential to serve as an early diagnostic tool for pancreatic cancer.

“This summer I was part of the American Chemical Society’s Project Seed program so I was given the opportunity to do some actual research over the summer,” Ma said. “That’s how I got the opportunity to start working on this project.”

She will make the oral presentation Saturday and then face a question-and-answer session from a judging committee.

Whether she advances or not, Ma said the experience is good for her.

Ma wants to study chemistry or biochemistry. She hopes to attend Harvard.

Zheng and Luo’s chemistry project is the “Synthesis of PET (Positron Emission Tomography) Breast Cancer Imaging Agents.”

The project is designed to develop an imaging technology that could be used in the diagnosis of breast cancer and monitoring of its response to treatment.

“My partner Michael found out about the competition and then he contacted me and we found a mentor,” Zheng said. “Then during the summer and for three months, we conducted research and put together a project to submit to Siemens.”

The two have made a Powerpoint presentation for their project.

“This is the first time I’ve competed in something this big as a team,” Zheng said. “We’ve both been looking forward to this since fall break when we learned we would be competing.”

Luo said the two have prepared well for the questions from the judges.

“I’ve done science projects with other partners before but nothing this prestigious,” Luo said. “I feel this is a great opportunity to develop my skills in presentation and research.”

Zheng and Luo are both considering majoring in medicine in college. Among the schools Zheng plans to apply to are Harvard, Northwestern, Duke, Stanford and Indiana universities.

Luo doesn’t have any particular college favorites yet but hopes to go to an Ivy League school.