West Dominates at Utah Science and Engineering Fair

Last Friday was the awards ceremony for the University of Utah Regional Science Fair.  They announced the five projects who will be moving on to compete in the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).  This year ISEF will be in Los Angeles, California in May.  ISEF is the highest level for science fair, and just qualifying one student to ISEF is a huge achievement for any high school.  The news is that three students out of five are winners are from West High School.   

The West High Grand Champion winners from the Utah Regional Fair were:

Aidan Yu for Biomedically Functional Sugars: Streamlined Approaches Towards Glycan-Based Drug Design

Mingchuan Cheng for Creating More Intuitive Prostheses: A Quantitative Method of Assessing Cognitive Load 

Aadhi Umamageswaran for Silhouettes of Sound (Fingerprinting Animal Vocalizations for Species Identification) 

The other Grand Champion ISEF winners were:

Sahil Shah from Waterford

Sierra Sun from Waterford

The following West High students were also awarded prizes:

7^th -8^th Grade:

Peter Kim, 1^st place Behavioral & Social Sciences, and ThermoFisher Junior Innovators Challenge, Can Cannabis Legalization for Adults Lead to a Rise in Adolescent Use?

Sohum Krishna & Atharv Khemka, 4^th place Biology & Microbiology, and T.D. Williamson's Outstanding Project in Energy or Environmental Science - Junior Division 2nd Place,  Algal Cultivation and Carbon Sequestration to Prevent Climate Change

Karthik Chaganti, 2^nd place, Computer Science & Applied Computational Methods, and Code Craft Award, and USEF Student Advisory Board (SAB) Awards - Junior Division 3rd Place, Memory Reunion - Adaptive neurogaming app for Alzheimer's patients

Jayden Roos, 2^nd place, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and ThermoFisher Junior Innovators Challenge, Foreverglades: How nutrient pollution is killing the Everglades

Aashita Mandiwal, 1^st place, Physics, Astronomy & Math, and Mission Math Awards - Junior Division 1st Place, and ThermoFisher Junior Innovators Challenge, Using Fractal Dimension to Detect Abnormalities in Cancerous Cells

Ethan Kim, United States Air Force Awards - Junior Division, Evaluating the Impact of Free Fare February on Air Quality in Salt Lake City

Adwita Mandiwal, USEF Student Advisory Board (SAB) Awards - Junior Division 1st Place, Self-Administering Artificial Pancreas to Control Diabetes

High School:

Nina Zhu, 2^nd place, Biology & Microbiology, and Bosch Motorsport Women in STEM Award, Antler Regeneration-Associated Proteins Promote Regenerative Cell Behaviors in Mouse Bone Progenitor Cells

Aidan Yu, 1^st place, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Biomedically Functional Sugars: Streamlined Approaches Towards Glycan-Based Drug Design

Aadarsh Kuberan, 3^rd place, Computer Science & Applied Computational Methods, Evaluation of Image Learning Against ECFP6 Fingerprinting for DNA-Encoded Library Drug Screening

Shurik Rajeev, 4^th place, Computer Science & Applied Computational Methods, Detecting Mutations in the Human Genome Through Reducing Hash Table Collisions

Krishnam Goel, 2^nd place, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and GENIUS Olympiad, and Stockholm Junior Water Prize Award, and T.D. Williamson's Outstanding Project in Energy or Environmental Science - Senior Division 1st Place, Redefining the Paradigm of Toxic Algal Blooms under Nutrient-Limited Conditions- A Breakthrough in Cyanobacterial Genomics

Anda Xie, 1^st place, Electrical Engineering, A Novel Implementation of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) Based Turn-Taking Intelligent Assistance Technology (IAT)

Mikhail Starykh, Shalin Mahate & Ivan Turan, 3^rd place, Electrical Engineering, Aquarium Heater

Mingchuan Cheng, 2^nd place, Medicine, Health Sciences, & Biomedical Engineering, Creating More Intuitive Prostheses: A Quantitative Method of Assessing Cognitive Load

Aadhi Umamageswaran, 1^st place, Physics, Astronomy & Math, and T.D. Williamson's Outstanding Project in Energy or
Environmental Science - Senior Division 2nd Place,  Silhouettes of Sound (Fingerprinting Animal Vocalizations for Species Identification)

Natalie Germanov & Sanskriti Negi, 2^nd place, Physics, Astronomy & Math, and Astrophysique Pioneer Award, Rendering Higher Dimensions with Ray Tracing

Eva Dvoretskiy, Office of Naval Research Awards - Senior Division, Non-Drug Approach to Treating Dermatophyte-Induced Tinea Unguium with 1,064 nm Nd:YAG Laser

Dan Jiang, United States Air Force Awards - Senior Division, The Implications of Fractal Geometry in Plants

Finally, this year was the first time that spots for the GENIUS Olympiad were available, and one of our students received a grand prize for this.

Krishnam Goel, for Redefining the Paradigm of Toxic Algal Blooms under Nutrient-Limited Conditions- A Breakthrough in Cyanobacterial Genomics

Krishnam will travel to Rochester, NY in June to compete in a science fair.   His work was selected for its environmental impact.