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Langley High Students' Plastic Straw Project Wins Award At VA Science Fair

Two Langley High School students won a top award at the state science fair for their project that looked at alternatives to plastic straws.

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Sean Lee and Kevin Lee of Langley High School won second place in the "Earth and Environmental Sciences" category at the state science fair. The project was titled "An Innovative Alternative to Plastic Straws with Bacterial Cellulose."
Sean Lee and Kevin Lee of Langley High School won second place in the "Earth and Environmental Sciences" category at the state science fair. The project was titled "An Innovative Alternative to Plastic Straws with Bacterial Cellulose." (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

MCLEAN, VA — Two students at Langley High School won a top award at the Virginia Science and Engineering Fair, held on Saturday at the Chartway Arena on the Old Dominion University campus in Norfolk.

Sean Lee and Kevin Lee of Langley High School won second place in the "Earth and Environmental Sciences" category at the state science fair. The project was titled "An Innovative Alternative to Plastic Straws with Bacterial Cellulose."

Sixty-nine students from FCPS participated in the state fair on April 15 in Norfolk.

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Two FCPS student projects received the Grand Prize award. They were:

  • Frank Chang, Stephen Tsai, and Jason Yoo of Chantilly High School for the project “ARM: Streamlining Recyclable Waste Identification with Highly Scalable Deep Learning Algorithms.”
  • Shinyoung Jeon of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “MoodBox: Vocal Screening for Depression and Gamified Relief.”

    • These projects qualified for participation in the International Science and Engineering Festival to be held in Dallas from May 14-19.

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    First through third place winners, and honorable mentions, in each category, are as follows:

    Animal, Behavioral, and Social Sciences

  • Second Place - Elizaveta Plis from Falls Church High School for the project “Effect of Larval Crowding of the Zophobas morio Beetle on Consumption of Polystyrene Foam.”


    • Biochemistry and Cellular, Mollecular Biology

  • Third Place - Samvrit Rao from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “In-vitro Aided Computational Approach to Identify Preclinical Drug Targets to Treat Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM).”


    • Chemistry

  • First Place - Benjamin Hawkins from Woodson High School for the project “The Impact of Insect Repellent on the Effectiveness of Sunscreen”
  • Third Place - Abigail Skinner from South Lakes High School for the project “The Effect of Increasing Temperature on the Illuminance of a Luminol Reaction.”

    • READ ALSO: Earth Day Issues Are Year-Round Focus For Edison High School Students

    Computational Biology and Translational Medicine

  • Second Place - Omkar Kovvali and Sritan Motati of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “OtoScan: A Novel, Inexpensive System for Comprehensive Diagnosis of Middle Ear Infections with an Intelligent Mobile Otoscope”
  • Third Place - Kyan Yang and Sara Becker of Madison High School for the project “Predicting Monkeypox Via Deep Learning-Driven Primary Morphology Analysis.”
  • Honorable Mention - Akshath Karthikeyan from Centreville High School for the project “Using Receptor Tyrosine Kinase and Resulting Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Cascade to Relocate Interleukin-7 Receptor to Provide Therapeutic Treatment for MS.”


    • Earth and Environmental Sciences

  • Second Place - Sean Lee and Kevin Lee of Langley High School for the project “An Innovative Alternative to Plastic Straws with Bacterial Cellulose”
  • Third Place- Sanchali Banerjee of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “A Novel Framework Using Long-Short Term Memory Networks to Predict Land Cover Evolution for Forestation Sustainability and Climate Change Mitigation.”


    • Engineering Technology: Statistics and Dynamics

  • First Place - Mihika Dusad and Aryaman Khanna from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “HypeFL: A Novel Blockchain-Based Architecture for a Fully-Connected Autonomous Vehicle System using Federated Learning and Cooperative Perception.”
  • Second Place - Andrew Kim and Joseph Tso from Woodson High School for the project “Centralized Urban Microhubs: A Solution for Efficient Food Delivery.”
  • Third Place - William Zhang from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “A Polarization-Based Approach to Reduce Glare of Vehicles at Night.”


    • Environmental Engineering

  • First Place - Frank Chang, Stephen Tsai, and Jason Yoo of Chantilly High School for the project “ARM: Streamlining Recyclable Waste Identification with Highly Scalable Deep Learning Algorithms.”
  • Second Place - Anirudh Mantha from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “Tracking Microplastics via Remote Sensing and Mathematical Analysis.”


    • Material Science and Sustainable Energy Design

  • First Place - Ellie Ngo and Sofia Pakhomkina from South Lakes High School for the project “The Effect of Temperature and Methods on Solar Cell Efficiency”
  • Second Place - Seoyoung Jun from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “Solar Tree: Bioinspired Solar Panel Design and Performance Review.”
  • Third Place - David Alfert from South Lakes High School for the project “The Effect of Sucrose on the Biodegradability of Gelatin-Based Bioplastic.”


    • Microbiology

  • First Place - Ashrita Gandhari from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “LetoHealth: A Second Opinion for Embryologists to Aid the Evaluation of the Health of Fertilized Embryos.”
  • Honorable Mention - Ayse Yener from Marshall High School for the project “The Effect of Hydrochloric Acid Molarity on Bacterial Viability Using a Hemocytometer.”


    • Physics, Math, and Astronomy

  • Second Place - Kent Fructman from Oakton High School for the project “The Effect of Reduced Friction on Vehicle Speed.”
  • Third Place - Sophia Cloutier from Marshall High School for the project “Lighting the Way: Emulating Fiber Optics with Acrylic Rods.”
  • Honorable Mention - Ronit Kapur from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “Gravity-Darkened Atmospheric Models of Exoplanets: Insights from KELT-9b.”


    • Plant Sciences

  • First Place - Aayush Shivashankar from Chantilly High School for the project “The Effect of Chlorine (ppm) on the Lead Phytoremediation Rate in Lemna minor.”


    • Software and Embedded Systems

  • First Place - Shinyoung Jeon from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “MoodBox: Vocal Screening for Depression and Gamified Relief.”
  • Third Place - Dhruv Anurag, Steven Lu, and Sathvik Redrouthu from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for the project “A Photonic Hardware Accelerator for Ultrafast Tensor Algebra Computations and Neural Network Inference.”

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