Fifty-three students in Darien High School’s Authentic Science Research program competed in the Connecticut STEM Fair on Saturday, Feb. 3, held at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge. A number of Darien students won prizes.
Over 500 students, judges and volunteers participated in the all-day event. Each student was required to create a poster exhibit, make a presentation, and participate in a question and answer session with two sets of judges.
The judges evaluated entries (both completed projects and research proposals) in four categories: health & medical sciences, physical sciences, environmental sciences, and behavioral sciences. A number of regional awards sponsored by the International Science and Engineering Fair were also presented.
We are pleased to announce that these DHS students earned top prizes:
For research proposals:
Catherine O’Connor – 1st Place, Health Science – “Depletion of the IkB Kinase and Inhibition of the NF-kB Complex as Gene Therapy for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma”
Manvi Malhotra – 1st Place, Environmental Science – “A Theoretical Model of the Emergent Effects of Increasing Temperature on Predator-Prey Interactions betweenDidinium and Paramecium”
Olivia Yoo – 1st Place, Behavioral Science – “Perivascular Macrophages and Neurovascular Dysfunction in a DOCA-Salt Hypertension Model”
Megan Cunningham – 2nd Place, Behavioral Science – “Combinations of Environmental Enrichment in Increasing the Frequencies of Exploratory Behaviors in Captive Wolves”
Thomas Finnegan – 2nd Place, Physical Science – “Effective Pitch-Catch Active Sensing Patterns For Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring”
Ashwini Patel – 3rd Place, Health Science – “Finding the Source of Cetuximab Resistance in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer”
Hallie Kreppein – 4th Place, Behavioral Science – “Long-term natal site-fidelity by immature great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) off of Long Island”
For completed projects:
Emily Findlan & Cheyenne Li – 1st Place, Team Project – “Positive Holes as Early Indicators for Future Earthquakes”
Daniel Pfrommer – 4th Place, Physical Science – “Fast Point-based Raytracing with Sphere Bounding Volume Hierarchies”
Christopher Vernal – 4th Place, Health Science – “Creation of a Screening Tool for Assessing Baseball Pitching Biomechanics”
For ISEF Regional Awards:
ISEF stands for International Science and Engineering Fair.
Daniel Pfrommer was presented the Mu Alpha Theta Award for the most challenging, original, thorough and creative investigation of a problem involving mathematics accessible to a high school student.
Alexandra Swift was presented the Stockholm Junior Water Prize recognizing outstanding water-related research at the high school level.