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This year, approximately 1,800 students entered the Regeneron STS, where they “submit original research in critically important scientific fields of study.” The organization said that the search is “unique among high school competitions in the US and globally, (as the) Regeneron STS focuses on identifying, inspiring, and engaging the nation's most promising young scientists.”
Judges narrowed the field to just 300, based on their research skills, commitment to education, innovative thinking, and prospects as a scientist.
The 10 students selected from Massachusetts received $2,000 both for themselves and as well as their schools. From the pool of semifinalists, 40 will be chosen as finalists and invited to Washington, D.C in March for their final judgment, where they will compete for more than $1.8 million in awards during a weeklong competition.
According to the judges, in 2017, Regeneron became only the third sponsor of the Science Talent Search, increasing the overall awards distribution to better reward the best and brightest young minds.
“Through its 10-year, $100 million commitment, Regeneron nearly doubled the overall award distribution to $3.1 million annually, increasing the top award to $250,000 and doubling the awards for the top 300 scholars and their schools to $2,000 each to inspire more young people to engage in science," officials said.
"Congratulations to this year's 300 Regeneron Science Talent Search scholars for their remarkable contributions and discoveries in the STEM field," Christina Chan, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Citizenship at Regeneron said. "We are honored to celebrate this new generation of problem solvers who have demonstrated the depth of their innovative thinking, commitment to continuous learning, and ability to tackle global challenges in creative ways."
This year's local Regeneron scholar semifinalists and their research projects include these Massachusetts students:
- Joshua Guo, Newton South High School (Middlesex County): "On the Gauss-Epple Homomorphism of the Braid Group Bn, and Generalizations to Artin Groups of Finite Type;"
- Yanan Jiang, Milton Academy (Norfolk County): "Generalizing Ruth-Aaron Numbers;"
- Frank Liu, Newton South High School: "Rapid Protein Mechanical Strength Prediction With an End-to-End Deep Learning Model;"
- Francis Liu, Lexington High School (Middlesex County): "Evaluating Pitchers’ Abilities With Regard to Strength of Schedule Using a Universal Law;"
- Waris Tuchinda, CATS Academy Boston: "Planar Heterojunction Perovskite Solar Cell With Graded Energy Band Architecture via Fast-Drying Spray Deposition;"
- Zoe Xi, Boston University Academy: "Approximation Algorithms for Dynamic Time Warping on Run-Length Encoded Strings;"
- Nathan Xiong, Phillips Academy (Essex County): "The Master Field and Free Brownian Motions;"
- Ali Yang, Phillips Academy: "Multimodal Contrastive Learning Matches the Transcriptome With Pathological Diagnoses;"
- William Yue, Phillips Academy: "Reconstructing Spider Trees from Traces Using Bivariate Littlewood Polynomials;"
- Kevin Zhao, Wayland High School (Middlesex County): "More Than BERT: oLMpics on Diverse Language Models."
A complete list of winners can be found here.
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