Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics
Third Award
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory requires boreholes drilled 2,500 meters into the Antarctic ice sheet using a 5 megawatt hot water drill. During the first 66 minutes of drill startup insuffi…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Third Award
Over 80 million people face loss of upper-limb function. Yet noninvasive electroencephalogram (EEG) prosthetic hand interfaces are limited to cumbersome, binary control due to severe signal…
Biochemistry
Third Award
The fidelity of DNA is essential for healthy cellular development and proliferation. Mismatched base pairs can arise because of polymerase errors or exposure to genotoxic chemicals. Mismatch…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Third Award
Ocean energy is a mostly unexplored renewable energy source. Conventional wave energy converters are limited by moving parts prone to deterioration and narrow frequencies ranges, which reduc…
Animal Sciences
Third Award
Recent studies have identified potentially harmful substances in menstrual products. However, the biological effects of exposure to these substances through menstrual products are poorly exp…
Physics and Astronomy
Third Award
Freshwater scarcity affects over 50% of the current world population, making atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) an important field of research. This project utilizes mechanically exfoliated…
Translational Medical Science
Third Award
Purpose. Osteosarcoma (OS) is an especially aggressive bone cancer disproportionately affecting children. Current treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation suffer from high recurr…
Product Science (Junior Division)
Third Award
I was interested in doing this project because microplastics could have profound impacts on destroying our health and environment. When brushing our teeth, microplastics are released from ou…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Third Award
Pollution is a concern throughout the world, particularly in oceans. Recent concerns have arisen about the impacts of microplastics. Sea urchins are commonly used for developmental studies,…
Chemistry
Third Award
Drug discovery requires an understanding of protein conformations and ligand binding poses. Classical molecular dynamics (MD) can provide this understanding, but it is too slow to sample ess…
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Third Award
Smartphones are deeply integrated into students' daily lives, and frequent notifications may interrupt sustained attention during academic tasks. This study examined whether realistic phone…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Third Award
Isoflurane is an FDA-approved volatile anesthetic used to induce and maintain general anesthesia. Isoflurane hyperpolarizes membrane potential by selectively enhancing K+ channels and inhibi…
Mathematics
Third Award
This project focuses on the Repelling Propellers Problem, an unsolved problem proposed by Professor James Propp. The question investigates how same-sign, equally charged/spaced points behave…
Materials Science
Third Award
Vanadium dioxide (VO2) thin films display an intriguing insulator-to-metal phase transition, which results in a distinct change in infrared (IR) transmittance across the solar spectrum. This…
Chemistry
Third Award
Peptide cyclization is a common chemical modification of linear peptides, resulting in the formation of cyclized frameworks. Compared to their linear counterparts, cyclic peptides are well k…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Third Award
Tornadoes are among the deadliest and costliest weather phenomena in our world and remain challenging to predict despite significant advancements in weather forecasting. Current tornado fore…
Applied Mechanics (Senior Division)
Third Award
Mini hydropower is underused in wastewater treatment due to high costs and abrasive grit flows. Epoxy reinforced with graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) or silicon carbide (SiC) may improve hardne…
Biomedical Engineering
Third Award
Pathological hand tremors affect 5% of the world population, yet diagnosis remains a subjective 0-4 visual score, and treatments are dangerous (Beta-Blockers), ineffective (orthotics), or ex…
Alternative Energy (Junior Division)
Third Award
Project Title: Turning Water into Rocket Fuel Author: Rhett Wyrick Abstract Hydrogen is an important clean energy fuel that can be produced from water using electricity through a process cal…
Behavioral & Social Sciences (Senior Division)
Third Award
Each year, over 350,000 people in the United States experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and nearly 90% do not survive. Early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can triple survival ra…
Embedded Systems
Third Award
Each year, over 350,000 people in the United States experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and nearly 90% do not survive. Early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can triple survival ra…
Plant Sciences
Third Award
Due to population growth, demand for crop yields is rising, leading to greater use of environmentally harmful chemical fertilizers. Stressors (e.g., water, salinity stress) complicate this i…
Environmental Engineering
Third Award
With approximately 4.4 billion people worldwide lacking access to safe water, sustainable purification technologies that operate efficiently under natural sunlight are necessary. Industrial…
Software Design
Third Award
Living alone should not mean dying alone, yet loneliness and unattended deaths continue to rise as global isolation increases; research shows a 32% increase in mortality among solitary indiv…
Medicine & Physiology (Track 2) (Senior Division)
Third Award
Central vision loss affects over 200 million people worldwide, arising from macular diseases including age-related macular degeneration, Stargardt disease, and diabetic macular edema. As cen…
Microbiology
Third Award
Human-pathogenic Vibrio, particularly Vibrio vulnificus, in Gulf oysters pose increasing public health risks as coastal waters warm. Although temperature–Vibrio relationships are known, stra…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Third Award
Sensing of the Tropopause and Marine Boundary Layer (MBL) is limited by cost and operational constraints of conventional fixed monitoring systems. WindDrift is a dual-modality Lagrangian sen…
Animal Sciences
Third Award
Anti-apoptotic B-cell leukemia/lymphoma (Bcl-2) proteins are overexpressed in around half of human cancers, linked to tumorigenesis, chemotherapy resistance, and poor prognosis. Effectively…
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics
Third Award
This research introduces a bio-inspired robotic tail exoskeleton designed to assist human balance, drawing inspiration from animals like cats and kangaroos. The device aims to address the si…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Third Award
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous neurological disorder affecting approximately 1 in 100 children today. The diagnosis and treatment of ASD are complex, partly due to its obs…