Science teacher Pam Lyman said the girl's research is teaching her teacher new things. "She's amazing," Lyman said. "And she's a very ordinary person, very humble. For a person with such great achievement, she sits among her peers like it's no big deal."

English teacher David DeCleene said he wants to bring up his 6-year-old daughter to be just like her. "I'm wondering how I can clone Kim," he said.

For the USA Today honor, she will receive a trophy and a $2,500 cash award.

Kim, who aspires to be a researcher, is a four-time state Science Fair winner and a three-time presenter at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium. She has received two grand awards at previous Intel fairs and was named a semifinalist in the Siemens Westinghouse math, science and technology competition.

The only child of Big Island pathologists Rhoda and Charles Reinhold, Kim became fascinated by artificial intelligence after reading an article in one of her father's magazines, Scientific American. It struck her that she might be able to develop a computer program to model the brain, and with virtually no help, she plunged into the project.

"If it doesn't work, oh, well, I don't win the science fair. It's not the end of the world," she told USA Today. "If you want to do something different, something that hasn't been done before, you just have to do it. You have to love what you're doing, and you have to be willing to try over and over again."

While science is Kim's forte, it isn't the only thing she does well. Check out this list: pep band conductor, first-chair oboe in the school concert band, varsity swim team captain, math league and science bowl captain, junior class president and assistant dance teacher.

Kim also has taken ballet, jazz and modern dance classes and learned the piano. In a couple of weeks, she will be appearing in the stage production of "Mary Poppins" at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo Theater.

DeCleene said Kim also played the role of the president during a mock school debate and was so thoroughly prepared and articulate that she handled everything thrown her way with ease.

"She's more like a college student — or even older — rather than an average high school student," he said. "Yet she's very, very humble. She never toots her own horn, and the kids like her."

Lyman said she knew Kim was going to excel after learning about the girl's fifth-grade project on DNA fingerprinting. "Much of her ideas come from within herself," she said. "She has such talent, eagerness and enthusiasm."

A couple of weeks ago, Kim impressed the judges at the National Junior Science & Humanities Symposium in San Diego, and in July she will be going to the next level in London. But before then, she will be honored by the Presidential Scholar program in Washington, D.C.