Systems Software
Second Award
Most large applications eventually require user-defined behavior to remain adaptable to different users. Common approaches to user-defined behavior are configurations (for simple behavior) a…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Second Award
In today’s world, electric cars have a more prominent role within society, they provide numerous benefits such as instantaneous torque, thereby eliminating the outdated exponential torque cu…
Physics and Astronomy
The question of the existence of extraterrestrial life has been a long-standing aspiration of humanity. Studying the physical, geological, and chemical conditions of exoplanets will advance…
Mathematics
The asteroid population is incomprehensibly large. Understanding, discovering and tracking asteroids are important to avoid catastrophic events to human civilization. Around one million aste…
Biochemistry
The purpose of this experiment is to find a novel way to treat burn wound infections by exploring the interaction between flavonoids and antibiotics. 'Flavonoids' are naturally derived secon…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
The ability to precisely measure cell permeability will be a necessary asset in the future development of intracellular antibiotics. The efficacy of the antibiotic vancomycin is reliant on c…
Environmental Engineering
Polythene plastic grocery bags made from petroleum by-products are everywhere. If these bags are not recycled, they pollute our environment. By recycling hundreds of these grocery bags, we c…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Background: Alzheimer’s Disease pathogenesis is associated with the deposition of amyloid-beta (AB) protein aggregates in the brain. No treatment has been proposed to degrade pre-oligomeric…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Water contamination is one of the most prevalent problems in the world right now. The World Health Organization estimates that, currently, 2 billion people use a contaminated water source. A…
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s most urgent public health problems. Every year in the US, around 2.5 million people get an antibiotic resistance infection, while 35000 people end…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Cancer cells are formed when mitosis, the asexual reproduction of cells, becomes uncontrollable and cells can no longer send or receive signals concerning their own growth. The purpose of th…
Biomedical Engineering
Tissue engineering can address significant need through proliferation of stem cells to grow organs sufficient for clinical transplantation. By combining 3D-printing, with growth of layered s…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
This project aimed to identify how the implementation of green infrastructure (GI) water harvesting systems impacts the carbon cycle by studying shifts in microbial composition and function.…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
First Award
Hematological or blood diseases afflict over 2 billion people globally and disproportionately impact developing regions, where mortality rates reach 50-90%. Current screening methods require…
Translational Medical Science
The tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) of breast cancer is a known source of tumor heterogeneity and it has been increasingly recognized as having a role in the course of disease. In the p…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no cure. In 97% of sporadic ALS patients, TDP-43 forms insoluble protein aggregates dysregulating RNA m…
Materials Science
More than 4 billion blood tests are performed annually worldwide. State-of-the-art diagnostics requires 7-10 mLs of blood and takes hours to days for results. Drawing mLs of blood for multip…
Animal Sciences
Snails are seemingly harmless animals in agricultural ecosystems: they are decomposers that feed off rotting vegetation and surplus soil nutrients. However, in order to move and maintain hom…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Saguaro cacti can withstand high desert winds, using pleats and spines to redirect wind toward the top of the plant. Wind turbine towers can be improved by imitating the saguaro cactus. It w…
Physics and Astronomy
Current rocket trajectories to Mars take nine months and follow the Hohmann Transfer. This project calculates a linear trajectory from Earth to Mars with effective negative mass as its propu…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Unilateral incompatibility (UI) occurs in an interspecific cross when the flower pistil terminates pollen tube formation prematurely before fertilization. UI occurs in one direction, the opp…
Systems Software
Quantum computing promises to provide algorithmic speedups for a number of tasks; however, similar to classical computing, effective error-correcting codes are needed. Current quantum comput…
Environmental Engineering
Second Award
Every year in the United States, 133 billion pounds of food waste is produced, of which 68% is potentially edible. At the same time, 35.2 million people in the U.S. struggle with food insecu…
Biomedical and Health Sciences
The purpose for this experiment was to prove or disprove whether social distancing via classrooms at school is effective with HVAC units in mind. We hypothesized that if petri dishes are pla…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Fourth Award
To reduce styrofoam pollution, Tenebrio beetles and their larvae, mealworms, are very effective. They can digest and biodegrade polystyrene plastic, or styrofoam, into released carbon dioxid…
Chemistry
The inner bark of the Chinese cinnamon tree Cinnamomum cassia is commonly processed into cinnamon sticks. The chemical compound that gives cinnamon sticks their flavor and odor is (2E)-3-phe…
Microbiology
Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are one of the most abundant entities on Earth and impact many ecosystems. Bacteriophages that follow the lysogenic cycle, when the phage integr…
Biomedical Engineering
Health related morbidity and mortality is on the rise in our country. Diabetes, Blood pressure are 2 serious conditions that can cause morbidity and mortality by causing heart disease, strok…
Plant Sciences
Previously unstudied "bending" in the central stems of the Saguaro Cactus, a plant unique to the Sonoran Desert, gives cause for concern about the effects on the health of this protected spe…
Plant Sciences
Does inducing auxin inhibit the plant to grow and bend towards the light? Understanding how phytohormones affect plants is vital as they are widely used in agriculture. Auxin is a class of p…