Fairfax County Seniors Chosen As 2020 Regeneron STS Finalists

FAIRFAX, VA — Two Fairfax County Public Schools students are among the top 40 finalists of the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search, Regeneron and Society for Science & the Public announced Wednesday. The competition is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.

The finalists from FCPS are Victoria Graf and Ankit Gupta of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Their project titles, respectively, are "Determining Stimulus Selection Parameters for Treatment of Neurological Disorders Using Statistical Analysis of EEG Signal Entropy" and "StrokeSave: A Novel, High-Performance Mobile Application for Stroke Diagnosis using Deep Learning and Computer Vision."

Finalists, representing 35 schools in 21 states, were chosen from top 300 scholars announced earlier this month. The 2020 competition drew 1,993 entrants who completed an original research project. According to a news release from the Society for Science & the Public, the finalists' selection was "based on their projects’ scientific rigor and their potential to become world-changing scientists and leaders."

The 40 finalists will travel to DC on March 5-11 to present their research projects to the public, interact with leading scientists and meet with members of Congress. They will compete for $1.8 million in awards. Each finalist will receive at least $25,000, and the top 10 awards are between $40,000 and $250,000. Winners will be announced on March 10.

Finalists' research projects address global challenges in different disciplines of science: animal science, behavioral and social sciences, bioengineering, cellular and molecular biology, chemistry, computational biology and bioinformatics, computer science, engineering, environmental science, genomics, materials science, mathematics, medicine and health, physics, plant sciences and space science.

Alumni of the Regeneron Science Talent Search have gone on to win 11 National Medals of Science, five Breakthrough Prizes, 21 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, two Fields Medals and 13 Nobel Prizes. The 2019 winner was Ana Humphrey of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria.

An award of $2,000 was provided to each of the top 300 scholars and their schools. The top 300 scholars included two Potomac School students, two Madison High School students, one Oakton High School student and six Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology students.