It's a Prototype! 2016 White House Science Fair

"As a society, we have to celebrate outstanding work by young people in science at least as much as we do Super Bowl winners. Because superstar biologists and engineers and rocket scientists and robot-builders … they’re what’s going to transform our society. They’re the folks who are going to come up with cures for diseases and new sources of energy, and help us build healthier, more successful societies." — President Obama

Missouri Girl Scouts Develop Recycling Program and Discover a New Glue — Now Seeking Two Patents: Sindhu Bala, 12, Ellie Englund, 12, Sydney Gralike, 13, Julianna Jones, 13, Reagan Mattison,12, and Christina Yepez, 13, of Girl Scout Troop #1484 from St. Louis, Missouri wanted to help a local retirement community be more environmentally friendly. They learned that 20,000 Styrofoam cups — cups which take 500 years to decompose in a landfill — were being used and disposed of every month. The team developed "Eco Bin," a metal bin containing a non-toxic substance (d-limonene) that dissolves Styrofoam when mixed with water, enabling households and businesses to reduce their waste. In a surprise twist, these innovators discovered that the gooey substance created by the mixture is a strong adhesive. The girls bottled and branded the substance, naming it "GlOo" and marketed it to their local school and other Girl Scout troops for art projects. These creations have earned the girls state accolades and the chance to compete for the Global Innovation Award at FIRST Lego League Nationals. The girls are also now pursuing patents for "Eco Bin" and "GlOo".

Middle School Students Build Prosthetics to Help Keep Veterans Active: Inspired by neighboring Buckley Air Force Base and, in particular, a veteran who needed a more comfortable and functional prosthetic limb, Simon-Peter Frimpong, 13, Maya Max-Villard, 13, and Grayson Fast, 14, designed and built a new prosthetic leg that will allow an amputee to hike, manage uneven terrain, and even skateboard! The team hails from Horizon Middle School in Aurora, CO, a school with students representing 56 countries and speaking 35 languages. Through the use of computer design, 3D printing of prototypes, and interviewing the veteran who would be using the prosthetic, the team delivered a more-functional artificial limb, earning them a spot as finalists in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow national competition.

Preventing Future Kidney Failure: 18-year-old Sanjana Rane, from Prospect, Kentucky, has helped discover how a particular protein could be used to detect and treat renal fibrosis. Her discovery helps to prevent renal fibrosis from developing into end-stage renal disease, an incurable total failure of the kidneys. Sanjana first became interested in pursuing medical research when she read a USA Today study ranking Louisville, her hometown, as having some of the worst air quality in the United States. She began to look into the dangers of air pollution and learned about the chemical acrolein, which is found in both cigarette and industrial smoke and can cause kidney damage. As Sanjana delved into her research, she began to focus on how to shift acrolein’s influence on the kidneys by using a particular protein as a therapeutic target. This novel approach won Sanjana a scholarship at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Looking forward in her career, Sanjana is interested in pursuing medicine; in particular, Sanjana would like to practice regenerative medicine to explore how to use stem cells to treat diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis, and ALS.

The Teen Who’s Putting an End to Oil Leaks: Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, 17, of Elmont, New York, was named a finalist in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search for adding a nanoclay ingredient called attapulgite to cement slurries to improve the undersea cement seals that keep offshore oil wells from leaking. She found that adding nanoclay at just 0.3 percent of the total volume of the mixture markedly improved the mixture’s properties. Augusta’s initial interest in cement stemmed from her learning that production of cement accounts for 7% of human-made carbon emissions.

Team Designs Robot to Clean Up New York City Subways: A team of young engineers from New York City, Amro Halwah, 18, Stephen Mwingria, 17, and Si Ya “Wendy” Ni, 18, saw a problem and wanted to do something about it: they and their classmates were often delayed getting to and from school because of rubbish fires in the subway system. So, for their Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam invention, they started building a 100-lb robot on student desks in the back of their small Spanish classroom. The result, a robot that moves along subway system rails, vacuuming up debris to make New York City’s transportation system cleaner and more efficient for kids like them who take the subway to school every day. The team is comprised of two students who came to the United States less than ten years ago knowing very little English, and a first generation college student. All three are now on an educational path in computer science or engineering.

Teen Tackles Early Cancer Detection: Neil Davey, 20, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, took on the study of cancer for his International BioGENEius Challenge project. Neil’s goal was to detect cancer early, when there are often more treatment options and better outcomes for cancer patients. His technique uses a combination of drop-based microfluidics and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect circulating tumor cell (CTC) genes, which are shed by tumors and enter the blood stream. In addition to improving early cancer detection, Neil’s solution provides the genomic details of the cancer, giving the treating doctor insights into the patients’ cancer that can enable for more-targeted precision medicine treatments.

Development of Ebola Diagnostic Test Wins Teen Top Honors in Global Competition: When learning of the Ebola epidemic spreading through Africa, Olivia Hallisey, 17, of Greenwich, CT, was concerned that the people who most needed diagnosis and treatment did not have access to care and decided to do something about it. As she learned about the challenges of delivering medical care in remote areas, she recalled her science lesson about silk storage and its stabilizing properties, thinking that silk could allow Ebola antibodies to travel much longer without the need for refrigeration. Olivia created the Ebola Assay card—a temperature-independent, rapid, portable, and inexpensive diagnostic test for the detection of the Ebola virus. This novel and impactful approach earned the Connecticut High School student the Grand Prize in the 2015 Google Science Fair.

Georgia Teen Wins National Competition for Research on Effects of Low-Dose Radiation On Patient Tissue: Nicole O’Dell, 17, of Stone Mountain, Georgia, won first place at the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) National Competition for her research on the effects of low-dose radiation. Nicole's project evaluated if the growth of patient diagnostic specimens are affected by exposure to low dose X-rays from security scanning machines, which are routinely used when transporting materials between research and diagnostic labs. Nicole hopes to use biotechnology to further the world's understanding of cellular biology, replication, injury, and cellular healing, and is aiming to reach these career goals by pursuing an MD-PhD in biochemistry.

Idaho Teen Looks to Prehistoric Past to Understand Climate Challenges: Nathan Charles Marshall, 17, of Boise, Idaho, was a finalist in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search for his project examining prehistoric climate change and what it means for our current climate challenge. For his project, Nathan used a marine sediment core to examine the warming effects of two natural pulses of carbon dioxide released 55 million years ago. Nate found that Earth recovered from the first before a second, larger pulse triggered massive warming of the planet lasting tens of thousands of years. Nate believes that his findings indicate that the planet can recover from current warming trends if humankind acts quickly to curtail carbon emissions or remove atmospheric carbon dioxide.

No Password? No Problem! Teen Engineer Develops Novel Cell-Phone Security Technique Based on How You Lift Your Phone: Yashaswini Makaram, 17, of Northborough, MA, created a new cell phone security tool that records the distinctive arm and hand motions people use to lift a cell phone from a table to uniquely identify the cell phone’s owner. To date, the technology correctly identifies a cell phone's owner 85 percent of the time and differentiates among people with 93 percent accuracy. Yashaswini's biometric research, which got her recognized as part of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, may lead to greater personalization of mobile devices.

Wisconsin High-School Student Already Fulfilling Her Dream of Being a Theoretical Astrophysicist: At the age of 8, while watching a television special on black holes, Kaisa Crawford-Taylor of Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, decided that she wanted to become a theoretical astrophysicist. At 17, she's already accomplishing her dream. Kasia's Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) project uncovers very massive black holes capable of emitting gravitational waves — such as those recently discovered by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) — using open databases; namely, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey"s tenth data release of quasars and New York University"s Value Added Catalogue. Using the computer language Python, Kaisa created a program that deftly sorted through the combined databases' 2.7 million galaxies. The program returned a handful of potential binaries, which Kasia analyzed to identify four supermassive black hole binary candidates.

Middle-School Coder Develops Tool to Help Teach the Periodic Table to the Visually Impaired: ( Hari Bhimaraju, a 12-year old Kennedy Middle School student from Cupertino, California, used a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to design the hardware and software for The Elementor, a portable, low-cost teaching tool to help visually impaired students learn the periodic table of elements. When a user enters an element's symbol with either a regular or a Braille keyboard, pictures and animations show a model for an atom of the element, along with light-up LEDs and sound beeps to describe the positions of the element's electrons. The system, which is now available for purchase, also uses a simulated Geiger counter to provide information about radioactivity, and a voice generation feature speaks all details out loud. In addition to winning the 1st Place Award in Technology at the 2015 Broadcom MASTERS competition, two schools for the blind have reviewed the tool's usefulness and are in the process of having their students use it.

Satisfying the Growing Demand for Pasteurized Eggs (Mikayla Ockels, 17; Milton, DE) In 2015, Mikayla Ockels, an 11th-grade student at Sussex Central High School in Georgetown, Delaware, conducted a project to identify the most profitable breeds to satisfy the growing demand for pasture raised eggs. Mikayla’s project, “Identifying Genes with Roles in Power Output of Exoelectrogenic Bacteria in Microbial Fuel Cell Heritage Hens, Weighing in on Feed to Egg”, studied which breed of Heritage Breed (a hardy breed that thrives in an outdoor environment) laying hen had the optimal Feed to Egg Conversion Rate (FECR), or total feed needed to produce an egg. Mikayla’s project earned her high accolades at the 2016 International BioGENEius Challenge, where she took home the Special Award for Practical Impact.

Charging the World with a Better Battery (Gabriel Mesa, 16; Canton, CT) In 2014, Gabriel Mesa, 16, of, Canton, Connecticut, combined piezoelectric materials with graphene, to create a new battery technology, the “Carbon Battery”—an environmentally safe and compostable battery that generates electrical energy through mechanical instead of chemical means. The patent-pending Carbon Battery seeks to replace conventional batteries that are typically created using toxic materials. Furthermore, the Carbon Battery is self-contained and requires no external stimulation, unlike alternative batteries powered by the sun, trash, or wind. The Carbon Battery is intended to provide a clean energy source for personal-use situations—such as lighting a rural home during monsoon season, when solar power is not feasible—and also has commercial applications—such as an always-on phone battery or (when used en masse) as a method for enhancing of existing power-generation sources such as dams. This invention earned Gabriel top honors at the 10 XPrize Challenge and BROADCOM Masters, won him first place at the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair, and made him a repeat winner at the Connecticut Invention Convention. In addition to commercializing the “Carbon Battery,” Gabriel is currently working on a device for diabetic neuropathy.

Las Vegas Middle School Team Takes on Sustainable City Design(Sydney Lin, 13; Krishna Patel, 12; Isha Shah, 13; Las Vegas, NV) Las Vegas, Nevada students Sydney Lin, 13, Krishna Patel, 12, and Isha Shah, 13, overcame the obstacle of losing their original teacher and mentor to compete at the Future City National competition. These Hyde Park Middle School students created a sustainable, waste-free, municipal city, winning Team Kilau Most Sustainable Buildings and City of the Future that Best Incorporates Cultural and Historical Resources.

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It's a Prototype! 2016 White House Science Fair

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