Browse 758 ISEF projects that won Second Award, with abstracts and links to the original entries.
ISEF · 2026
Translational Medical Science Second Award
Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's affect millions worldwide, yet current diagnostic methods remain invasive, expensive, and largely inaccessible during the critical early intervent…
ISEF · 2026
Chemistry Second Award
The healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors play a critical role in combating various diseases affecting human and societal life. One of the diseases affecting many people today is tinea skin…
ISEF · 2026
Chemistry Second Award
Environmental contaminants, particularly bisphenols, have become increasingly widespread. As a result, global water pollution has become of greater concern. Water pollution has a profound ef…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Second Award
Gliomas remain the deadliest form of brain cancer, with patients surviving one year post-diagnosis on average, 5-year survival rates as low as 5%, and no major treatment advances in the past…
ISEF · 2026
Translational Medical Science Second Award
Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), are typically diagnosed after 50-80% neuronal loss, reflecting a critical failure of early…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical and Health Sciences Second Award
Despite advances in immunotherapy, up to 60% of melanoma patients do not respond to treatment. Emerging evidence suggests that physical exercise enhances anti-tumor immunity; however, the mo…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Second Award
Nearly 50% of human IVF embryos arrest before reaching the blastocyst stage, yet the molecular mechanisms causing this failure remain poorly understood. Current literature examines omics in…
ISEF · 2026
Microbiology Second Award
Restoring severely eutrophic waters, especially in hardened urban river channels, is challenging and costly due to algal blooms, turbidity, microbial overgrowth, oxygen depletion, and nutrie…
ISEF · 2026
Animal Sciences Second Award
With 5.6 billion pounds of pesticides entering ecosystems annually, traditional monitoring methods such as soil and water sampling cannot cover large areas, cost $500–600 per sample, and tak…
ISEF · 2026
Earth and Environmental Sciences Second Award
Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (HABs) pose threats to aquatic ecosystems and public health, yet existing prediction models rely on single-variable correlative thresholds that fail to ca…
ISEF · 2026
Technology Enhances the Arts Second Award
This experiment aimed to create an Artificial Intelligence (AI) method that rates /s/ pronunciations comparable to a speech therapist, and more accurate than adults untrained in speech thera…
ISEF · 2026
Plant Sciences Second Award
Yaupon Holly and Yerba Mate are two economically important, caffeine-producing holly (i.e., Ilex) species in America. Yaupon Holly is native to North America and Yerba Mate is native to Sout…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Second Award
Ankle-foot prosthetics aim to recreate the biological motion of the ankle and restore natural gait to transtibial amputees. Achieving this requires motion in three dimensions and a variable-…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Second Award
Structural comparison between proteins is key to many research tasks, including evolutionary analysis, peptidomimetics, and functional annotation. Traditional structure alignment tools such…
ISEF · 2026
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics Second Award
Traditional figure skating jump-assist devices often require manual coach operation and lack adaptability to varying athlete heights and weights. This project developed a universal kinematic…
ISEF · 2026
Robotics and Intelligent Machines Second Award
Microplastics have a devastating effect on global ecosystems, however, conventional monitoring methods are expensive, inefficient, and cumbersome requiring week-long laboratory analyses, whi…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Second Award
Drug–target interaction (DTI) prediction is a crucial step in modern drug discovery. Accurate and efficient predictions can substantially reduce costs and development time. While deep learni…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Second Award
Resistance to targeted therapies in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) limits treatment efficacy. Mathematical models have shown promise in predicting resistance development by capturing bio…
ISEF · 2026
Environmental Engineering Second Award
While global oil production exceeds 100 million barrels per day, over 40 million liters of crude oil have contaminated marine ecosystems since 2020, resulting in catastrophic ecological and…
ISEF · 2026
Translational Medical Science Second Award
The lack of rapid, accessible, and precise quantitative biomarkers for lesion grading remains the primary barrier to preventing cervical cancer—a leading cause of cancer death among women wo…
ISEF · 2026
Biomedical Engineering Second Award
Your mind works perfectly, but your body will not let you speak. Millions with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, stroke, or paralysis live trapped inside working minds. Today's brain-computer i…
ISEF · 2026
Animal Sciences Second Award
Coral reefs are rapidly declining due to climate change and pollution, with more than 80% of reefs worldwide at risk of bleaching. However, current restoration efforts cannot ensure long-ter…
ISEF · 2026
Materials Science Second Award
Arsenic (As) is a known carcinogen, and its contamination of groundwater is a major global public health concern, with approximately 200 million people at risk of arsenic poisoning. Addressi…
ISEF · 2026
Embedded Systems Second Award
Cryogenic Electron Microscopy (Cryo-EM) is the cornerstone technique for determining atomic-resolution structures of proteins implicated in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Howev…
ISEF · 2026
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Second Award
The human proteome comprises ~20,000 unique proteins, yet only 3,000 are theoretically druggable given current therapeutic methods. Molecular glues (MGs) are therapeutics that eliminate path…
ISEF · 2026
Behavioral and Social Sciences Second Award
Phubbing (phone use during face-to-face interactions) affects 75% of smartphone users and correlates with depression, loneliness, and relationship dissatisfaction. While contingency manageme…
ISEF · 2026
Mathematics Second Award
I investigated whether quandle colorings (homomorphisms) can detect causality for links realized as skies in a (2+1)-dimensional globally hyperbolic spacetime X. I built on the Allen–Swenber…
ISEF · 2026
Environmental Engineering Second Award
Interfacial solar steam generation systems offer a promising solution to freshwater scarcity and energy-intensive desalination. However, most current research uses hydrophilic membranes that…
ISEF · 2026
Physics and Astronomy Second Award
Electromagnetic forces inside matter are fundamental in condensed matter physics but there are multiple theories that describe them and it is yet to be determined which theory is correct. Th…
ISEF · 2026
Behavioral and Social Sciences Second Award
Schizophrenia affects 24 million people worldwide. A critical barrier to treatment is anosognosia, the lack of illness awareness that develops in later-stage SCZ and causes patients to refus…