When Shivani Sud was 6, a relative developed a brain tumor. The cancer turned out to be benign, but the experience piqued the girl’s interest in cancer research. And on Tuesday night, Shivani, now 17, a high school senior in Durham, N.C., took home top honors and a $100,000 scholarship in the Intel Science Talent Search for her project on colon cancer.

“I was wobbly, waiting for them to announce the top 10,” said Shivani, who attends Charles E. Jordan High School, and whose project identified patients at high risk for tumor recurrence and proposed potential drugs for treatment. “I was sitting on the tip of my chair.”

Intel announced the winners of its contest, formerly known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, at a gala in Washington.

Katie Banks, 17, of Brooklyn, was the only New York City student  from five finalists  to be a top winner. She attends Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and says she is averse to dressing up, especially for ceremonies. She came in fourth for her project calculating the number of lattice points that can fit inside a nine-sided convex lattice polygon. She took home a $25,000 scholarship.