Browse 1,659 ISEF projects that won Fourth Award, with abstracts and links to the original entries.
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Fourth Award
Deeper superficial abrasions or wounds that extend into the dermis often require intensive treatment to prevent complications such as infection, pain, and delayed healing. In these cases, sk…
ISEF · 2026
Environmental Engineering Fourth Award
Devices placed on the seabed in shallow coastal waters must remain stable under waves and near-bed currents. In this project, I developed a coastal underwater seabed waste bin that serves as…
ISEF · 2026
Mathematics Fourth Award
Gerrymandering poses a significant threat to American democracy. Current identification methods, e.g. Polsby-Popper and Reock scores are highly sensitive to physical geography and unreliable…
ISEF · 2026
Robotics and Intelligent Machines Fourth Award
The $191.3 billion U.S. infrastructure repair backlog and unreliability of traditional manual visual inspections, which miss up to 94% of cracks, demonstrates the urgent need for improved in…
ISEF · 2026
Environmental Engineering Fourth Award
Synthetic herbicides dominate agriculture due to their effectiveness and low cost; however, they cause water contamination, biodiversity loss, and the development of resistant weeds, threate…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Fourth Award
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cancer-derived cells in the bloodstream and serve as important biomarkers for early cancer detection and monitoring. However, current clinical methods…
ISEF · 2026
Software Design Fourth Award
The purpose of this project was to create and evaluate a heuristic algorithm for the Shortest Vector Problem (SVP), a fundamental challenge underlying lattice-based post-quantum cryptography…
ISEF · 2026
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics Fourth Award
Aerospike engines eliminate the 30–40% efficiency loss from conventional bell nozzles, yet no aerospike has achieved full operational flight due to extreme thermal loads on the central spike…
ISEF · 2026
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics Fourth Award
This project aims to develop compact robots that can be easily assembled and deployed, potentially in swarms. An autonomous mobile robot based on a Tensegrity structure is developed. The Ico…
ISEF · 2026
Environmental Engineering Fourth Award
Emergencies like wildfires and industrial accidents threaten public health. Accurate predictions of pollutant dispersion are vital for timely protective actions, but atmospheric models often…
ISEF · 2026
Chemistry Fourth Award
Industrial wastewaters from gold mining and other industries often contain highly toxic cyanide-based compounds that threaten ecosystems and human health. This project bibliographically inve…
ISEF · 2026
Earth and Environmental Sciences Fourth Award
Sub-Saharan Africa is vulnerable to variations in precipitation levels, as a large percentage of the population practices subsistence farming and most of their electricity is from hydropower…
ISEF · 2026
Plant Sciences Fourth Award
Weed infestations are considered as the most prominent biotic stressors threatening crop yields globally, contributing to 25-40% of annual crop losses. Currently, synthetic herbicides are mo…
ISEF · 2026
Plant Sciences Fourth Award
The AnisGuard project was born from the urgent need to combat the contamination crisis caused by filamentous fungi in coffee beans from Brazil, a threat that compromises food safety through…
ISEF · 2026
Animal Sciences Fourth Award
Declining Arctic sea ice is rapidly altering polar bear habitat and increasing interactions with human activities. This study investigated how sea-ice loss influences polar bear movement and…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Fourth Award
Crohn's Disease (CD) is a chronic autoimmune condition characterized by intense inflammatory flares. CD is incurable, and available medications carry severe side effects. With few head-to-he…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Fourth Award
One in four people is affected by pollen allergies, experiencing symptoms from allergic rhinitis to life-threatening anaphylactic shocks, and they heavily rely on up-to-date pollen counts in…
ISEF · 2026
Plant Sciences Fourth Award
Up to 17% of cropland worldwide is contaminated with at least one toxic heavy metal, with lead and copper among the most prevalent contaminants. While some remediation methods exist today, t…
ISEF · 2026
Microbiology Fourth Award
Food waste accounts for 58% of methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLF), one of the top three sources of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Over 96% of MSWLFs lack deco…
ISEF · 2026
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics Fourth Award
Current methods of metal additive manufacturing (AM) typically require high-power laser or arc technology to melt metal into desired forms (powder bed fusion and wire arc AM, respectively).…
ISEF · 2026
Translational Medical Science Fourth Award
Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disease associated with the deterioration of motor control and cognitive function as age advances. Representing the fa…
ISEF · 2026
Physics and Astronomy Fourth Award
Quantum computers promise computational advantages beyond classical limits. Although reported gate fidelities are high for modern devices, widely thought to indicate high performance, they d…
ISEF · 2026
Materials Science Fourth Award
Artificial intelligence hardware is increasingly constrained by the energy cost of data movement: a single DRAM access can consume 200× the energy of an on-chip compute operation. Neuromorph…
ISEF · 2026
Physics and Astronomy Fourth Award
Most traditional detection pipelines miss eclipsing binary (EB) stars because they look for transit-like dips and disregard signals that occur between eclipses, dismissing them as noise. Thi…
ISEF · 2026
Materials Science Fourth Award
Scanning transmission electron microscopy (S/TEM) is essential for atomic-scale research that drives advances in energy materials and nanotechnology, but its operation is limited by labor-in…
ISEF · 2026
Microbiology Fourth Award
In this project, we aimed to investigate the potential use of phages (bacterial viruses) as a form of biocontrol against bacterial plant pathogens. Our goal was to specifically test the effe…
ISEF · 2026
Translational Medical Science Fourth Award
EquiliMind is a multimodal fall-prevention system designed to address the unpredictable vertigo, imbalance, and sudden fall risk associated with Ménière’s disease. Current clinical approache…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Fourth Award
Aphonia—complete loss of voice following stroke or laryngeal surgery—affects millions worldwide yet lacks practical, non-invasive communication solutions. This study was deeply motivated by…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Fourth Award
Robotic-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RAMIS) was used in millions of procedures in 2025. Despite its widespread adoption, current systems largely lack force-sensing capabilities and r…
ISEF · 2026
Earth and Environmental Sciences Fourth Award
Individuals spend approximately 90% of their time indoors, so maintaining a good Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is important. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is an essential component of IAQ, as t…