Search past science fair projects

Quantifying Enzymatic Activity and pH to Create a Wearable Smart Bandage for Partial-Thickness Burns

Biomedical Engineering

Partial-thickness burns make up 85.4% of all clinical cases (Ji et al., 2024). At the same time, those in underrepresented areas display higher burn incidences and are less likely to adminis…

Quantifying Natural Recovery of Dopamine Deficits Induced by Chronic Stress

Rising levels of depressive disorders, marked by irreversible dopaminergic dysfunction, have sparked research into prevention methods. Chronic stress significantly contributes to dopamine de…

CWSF · 2026

Quantifying Tremor Activities in Parkinson's Disease Using Motion Sensors

Disease & Illness

I developed a low-cost device to measure tremors, which are small, involuntary movements often seen in conditions like Parkinson’s disease. I was inspired to do this after seeing how difficu…

Quantifying Variability in AI Outputs

Mathematical Sciences (Junior Division)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become quite common and can be found doing many different things. Around 73% of Americans show a willingness to incorporate AI into their daily lives (Pew Re…

Quantitative Analysis of Angle-Dependent Surface Coloration on Sashimi: Testing Thin-Film Interference, Muscle-Fiber Structural Color, and Optical Activity

Animal Sciences Fourth Award

Raw fish (sashimi) consumption is common in Japan, and angle-dependent coloration is regularly observed during meals. Although similar coloration has been reported in meat, few studies have…

Quantitative Analysis of Antennal Movements Triggering Trophallactic Behavior in Honeybees Using DeepLabCut, a Deep Learning-Based Markerless Pose-Tracking Tool

Animal Sciences

Honeybees exhibit trophallaxis, a behavior in which a recipient extends their proboscis to drink a nectar droplet held by the donor's mouthparts. During this process, the recipient's antenna…

Quantitative Characterization of LoRa Propagation: Model–Measurement Discrepancies in Ground-Based SAR Tracking Networks

Electronics & Electromagnetics (Senior Division) Honorable_mention Award

Wilderness search-and-rescue (SAR) operations in U.S. national parks have remained consistently high over the past decade, placing sustained strain on emergency response systems. National Pa…

Quantitative Characterization of LoRa Signal Propagation: Discrepancies Between Analytical Link-Budget Models and Empirical Field Measurements for a Novel Ground-Based LoRa Grid Network Tracking and Search-and-Rescue System

Embedded Systems Third Award

Wilderness search-and-rescue (SAR) operations across U.S. national parks exceed 4,000 to 4,500 incidents annually, with over 40,000 missions between 2015 and 2025. In August 2024, a multi-da…

Quantitative Localization of Seizure Onset Zones Using Time–Frequency Neural Biomarkers

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

Drug-resistant epilepsy affects nearly one-third of patients and often requires surgical intervention; however, success depends on accurate localization of the seizure onset zone (SOZ), curr…

Quantitatively and Visually Analyzing Chaos in the Double Pendulum

Physics & Astronomy (Senior Division)

Chaos, discovered in the 1960s by Edward N. Lorenz, has a broad variety of applications from describing many systems in our daily life to analyzing systems such as electrical pulses in the h…

Quantum Batteries

Physics and Astronomy

This project explored whether quantum batteries, which utilize the quantum mechanical principles of superposition and entanglement, have the potential to serve as an important energy storage…

Quantum Canary: Neural Network Based Autonomous Noise Drift Detection in NISQ Era Quantum Processors

Physics and Astronomy

Quantum computers use the principles of quantum mechanics — superposition, entanglement, and coherence — to solve problems that classical computers simply cannot. In the current era of Noisy…

Quantum Constrained Bioenergetic Instability as a Physical Limit on Early Cancer Signal Detection

Biochemistry/ Molecular Biology (Senior Division)

Early cancer detection is commonly framed as a classification problem, yet such approaches rarely address whether early disease states are physically detectable in molecular data at all. Her…

Quantum-Inspired Reservoir Computing Using Simulated Spintronic Networks

Physics & Astronomy (Senior Division)

This project develops a physics-grounded framework for reservoir computing implemented in simulated spintronic networks (STNO arrays, vortex MTJs and skyrmion textures). By deriving semi-ana…

Quantum Thermal Interference - Characterization of Thermal Light Interference in Multi-Slit Systems

Physics & Astronomy (Junior Division)

Controlling the spatial distribution of thermal radiation is important for passive thermal management in microelectronics, suppression of thermal noise in quantum and cryogenic systems, and…

Quiet Science

Applied Mechanics (Junior Division)

Which material absorbs sounds the best?

Quorum Sensing Inhibition via Traditional Chinese Medicinal Plant-Derived Phytochemicals: A Sustainable and Targeted Anti-Virulence Strategy

Microbiology

Phytochemicals are naturally occurring compounds in plants, relatively understudied for their ability to interfere with bacterial communication mechanisms, and the underlying modes of action…

Rabies Neuroinvasion and Incubation Period in Humans

Biomedical and Health Sciences

This project aims to explore the mechanisms the rabies virus uses to evade the immune system while traveling through the nervous system. We are motivated by the challenge of comprehending ho…

RADIA: Novel Assessment Through a Unified AI-Driven Embedded Respiratory Health System Integrating 3D Airway Modeling for Rapid Screening, Monitoring, and Rehabilitation

Biomedical Engineering Third Award

Obstructive and restrictive respiratory diseases are major global health challenges and are associated with prolonged exposure to smoke and air pollution. Among these conditions, Chronic Obs…

Rain or Shine, Stop on Time!

Electronics & Electromagnetics (Junior Division)

Autonomous vehicles often use time-of-flight (ToF) sensors that emit near-infrared light and measure the return time to estimate the distance to obstacles. In extreme weather and lighting, w…

CWSF · 2026

RAISE: Early Detection of RED-S Risk Using Machine Learning and Wearable Data

Health & Wellness Silver Medal

I created RAISE (Recovery Analytics and Intensity Surveillance Engine) as an individualized early-warning system to prevent Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), a condition where an…

Rapid 14-Minute Detection: Development and Application of a Portable Nucleic Acid Rapid Testing Device for Primary Care

Biochemistry/ Molecular Biology (Senior Division) Second Award

Rapid identification of respiratory pathogens is essential for selecting the appropriate treatment, especially in primary care clinics and developing areas with limited medical resources. I…

Rapid-Deployment Micro-Buoy System for Aquatic Environmental Monitoring

Environmental Engineering

Continuous water quality monitoring is critical for safeguarding aquatic ecosystems, informing environmental management decisions, and supporting public health. However, conventional systems…

Rapid Discovery of Robot Designs via Model Predictive Control

Applied Mechanics (Senior Division)

Through the process of evolution, natural organisms have developed distinct morphologies suited to their environment and mode of survival. With this as inspiration, recent work has studied g…

Rapidly Prototypable Hexagonal Modular Robots with Motor-Driven Fluidic Actuators for Resource-Constrained Environments

Applied Mechanics (Senior Division) Honorable_mention Award

Modular robotics enables the application of robotics in areas that were inaccessible, as traditional robots require money, iteration, and time to design, like rapid-relief disaster zones, em…

Rapid Norovirus Detection Using Magnetic Beads-Based RNA Extraction and Colorimetric RT-LAMP

Translational Medical Science

Norovirus is the leading cause of gastroenteritis worldwide, causing over 685 million cases each year globally, yet rapid and sensitive detection tools remain limited. All diagnostic technol…

CYSF · 2026

Ray-Sistance; can yeast outrun UV damage?

Gold Medal

This is a project about the DNA of yeast and to see if the yeast forms a resistance after exposure to UV rays

ReachAI: Machine Learning-Based Prosthetic Hand for Adaptive Rock Climbing

Medicine & Physiology (Senior Division)

Rock climbing is inaccessible to individuals with hand amputations because existing myoelectric prosthetics cannot perform sport-specific grips like crimps, pinches, and slopers. This projec…

Ready! Set! Stretch!

Behavioral & Social Sciences (Junior Division)

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether stretching before running affects a person’s speed. The scientific question asked was: Does stretching before running affect someone’s…

Real-Time Coronal Magnetic Field Modeling Using Physics-Informed Fourier Neural Operators

Physics and Astronomy

Coronal magnetic fields are a driving force behind the formation and evolution of solar energetic particle events, which are known to disrupt critical ground and space infrastructure, causin…