[Source: Arizona Republic] — Arizona students are bringing home more than $69,000 in scholarships and prizes from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2006, presented by Agilent Technologies. The fair is the world’s largest exhibition of the world’s young scientists and inventors in Grades 9-12. A pool of 1,482 competitors entered from 47 countries, regions and territories. The finalists, who competed in Indianapolis last week, began as part of a worldwide field of several million in the past year.
Here are the Arizona winners and their projects:
- Albert David Shieh, 16, Chaparral High School, Scottsdale. Project: Novel Algorithms for Automated SNP Genotyping. Second-Place Grand Award, Biochemistry, $1,500.
- Erin F. Eppard, 17, Thunderbird High School in Phoenix. Project: Operator Injury Mitigation Using Electronic Sensing, Mechanical Braking and Decoupling Devices in Handheld Circular Saws. First-place engineering award from Oregon State University, tuition scholarship of $5,000 per year for four years. Also First-Place Grand Award, Engineering, $3,000.
- Annette Joy Mendivil, 17, Casa Grande Union High School in Casa Grande. Project: Utilizing Science To Promote Sustainable Economic Development in Our Tribal Community: Protein Metabolism in Tilapia Fish for Optimal Growth, Year 3. First-place zoology award from OSU, tuition scholarship of $5,000 per year for four years. Also Fourth-Place Grand Award, Zoology, $500.
- Michael R. Mitchell, 18, Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix. Project: Protein Analysis of Primary and Recurrent Human Malignant Gliomas. Third-Place Grand Award, Biochemistry, $1,000.
- Elizabeth Anne Baker, 17, from University High School in Tucson. Project: The Wishing Tree: A Six-Year Analysis of Human Desire. Second-Place Grand Award, Behavioral and Social Science, $1,500.
- Michael Allen Fan, 18, Dobson High School in Mesa; Corina I. Oprescu, 16, Corona del Sol High School in Tempe; and Hersh Vivek Goel, 17, Gilbert High School in Gilbert. Project: A Hybrid Reaction-Diffusion Cellular Automata Model of Glioblastoma. Fourth-Place Grand Award, Team Projects, $500.
- Andrew David Gamalski, 17, Hamilton High School in Chandler and Vinayak Muralidhar, 16, from Corona del Sol High School in Tempe. Project: A New Algorithm To Minimize Factory Inefficiency Through Penalty Reduction. Award of $500, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Also Second-Place Grand Award, Team Projects, $1,500.
- Jingyuan Luo, 17, from Hamilton High School in Chandler. Project: Toxicity and Ecological Implications of Nanomaterials to Phytoplankton. Second-Place Grand Award, Environmental Science, $1,500.
- Natasha Hasbah Gail, 17, from Rough Rock Community School in Chinle. Project: Identification of Conditions that Affect the Resolution of the Global Positioning System. Fourth-place award $500, Coast Guard. Also first-place earth science award from OSU, tuition scholarship of $5,000/year for four years.