2016 Intel ISEF competition: Teens take home huge awards for their research
Two weeks ago, this would have been in LBN. Was there a thread at DU about this? Local newspapers talk up the local winners. Here's the whole thing:
Teens take home huge awards for their research
The 2016 Intel ISEF competition rewarded research for making better fuel cells, batteries and leg braces
By Sid Perkins 6:03pm, May 13, 2016
PHOENIX, Ariz. In a week when this southwestern city sweltered in the heat, teen researchers were pulling down awards for very cool science. Top winners included a teen looking to improve devices that use microbes to convert organic wastes into electricity. Another developed safer, cheaper and more eco-friendly batteries. Yet another showed how to cheaply modify off-the-shelf leg braces to make a patients knees flex easily.
Together, these three teens garnered $175,000. That was just a small share of the roughly $4 million in prize money given out here, this week, at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Created by Society for Science & the Public and sponsored by Intel, this year's competition brought together more than 1,750 students. They came from more than 75 countries, regions and territories. (SSP also publishes Science News for Students.) More than one-third of all finalists received some sort of award for their research. ... Intel congratulates this years winners and hopes that their work will inspire other young innovators to apply their curiosity and ingenuity to todays global challenges, said Rosalind Hudnell. Shes president of the Intel Foundation.
Han Jie (Austin) Wang, 18, hails from Vancouver, Canada. He won the $75,000 Gordon E. Moore award. This top prize is named for Intels cofounder. Austin attends David Thompson Secondary School. For his project, he studied the microbes used in devices called microbial fuel cells. They can turn wastes into electricity.
Austin identified more than 100 genes associated with the transfer of electrons within bacteria as they take in energy and grow. Many of these genes were never before recognized, the teen says. He figured out which were best at helping the microbes make energy. By tapping the bacteria that host these genes, he boosted power production in his fuel cells by a whopping 20 times.
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