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.
Photo from Darien High School
Connecticut STEM Fair was held at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, just outside New Haven, on Saturday. STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Math.
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.