Madison Student Places Third In Virginia Science Fair

VIENNA, VA—Madison High School's Justin Hu earned the third grand prize at this year's Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair, Fairfax County Public Schools announced. He qualified to compete in the International Science and Engineering Fair happening May 12-17 in Phoenix.

His third place win resulted from his project "Using Self Assembled Monolayers for the Fabrication of Implantable Strain Gauge Sensors."He also won first place in the Materials Science category.

Numerous FCPS students placed or received honorable mentions in their respective categories. Another Madison student, Rayan Yu, placed third in the mathematics category for the project "Applying Clustering Algorithms to Classify and For Forecast Financial Time-Series." Solomon Hutchins and Noa Yager placed third in biochemistry for "Quantifying the Amount of Capsaicin in Varying Types of Pepper."

Below are the other winners from FCPS by category.

• Animal Science: first place: Korrina Gidwan of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, "Retinoic Acid on SFM Nerve Cord Regeneration in Procambarus Clarkii"
• Biochemistry: first place: Junhyun Chong of TJHSST, "A chemiluminescent dual-aptasensor capable of simultaneously quantifying prostate specific antigen and vascular endothelial growth factor"; third place: Solomon Hutchins and Noa Yager of Madison High School, Quantifying the Amount of Capsaicin in Varying Types of Peppers"
• Behavioral and Social Sciences: first place; Victoria Graf of TJHSST, "Localizing Neurological Response Entropy from Music Stimuli through Assessment of Memory and Training Effects via Wavelet EEG Analysis"; third place: Lindsey Wang of Chantilly High School, "The Effect of Sentence Characteristics on Readability and Text Ranking"
• Computational Biology and Bioinformatics: first place: Neeyanth Kopparapu of TJHSST, "MRI Image Synthesis for the Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease using Deep Learning"; second place: Aria Moss and Svetlana Pack of TJHSST, "Order within the Chaos: A Data-Based Approach to Clarifying the Effect of Seizure Etiology on Seizure Cycle Parameters in Epileptic Patients"; third place; David Toomer of Hayfield Secondary School, "CeRNetwork: A Platform for in silico Discovery and Classification of Competing Endogenous RNA Sequences for Multi-Omic Network Diffusion and Novel miRNA-Sequestering Drug Design"
• Earth and Environmental Sciences: second place; Ankisha Singh of Oakton High School, "The Effect of Cilantro vs Standard Water Purification Methods on Water Quality"
• Energy: Chemical and Physical: second place: Kaien Yang of TJHSST, "Discovery of FAZnF3, an HOIP for Water Splitting"; honorable mention: Hari Raman of Westfield High School, "The effect of different salt-to-water ratios on a salt-water powered car"
• Engineering Mechanics: third place: James Chen of TJHSST, "Optimization of a Methalox Rocket Engine"
• Mathematics: third place: Rayan Yu of Madison High School, "Applying Clustering Algorithms to Classify and For Forecast Financial Time-Series"
• Microbiology: First; Miamar Burgos-Rosario, Saijai Supanklang, and Sarah Syed of Hayfield Secondary School, Cyanocide: A Novel Strategy for Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation via Initiation of Programmed Cell Death; honorable mention: Sanika Karandikar of TJHSST,The Efficacy of Photosensitizer Mediated Photodynamic Treatment in Eradicating Staphylococcus Epidermis Biofilms.
• Physics and Astronomy: first place; Abhishek Allamsetty of TJHSST, "A Novel Machine Learning Toric Decoder for Rapid Quantum Error Correction"; second place: Luke Mrini of Lake Braddock Secondary School, "Modelling Energy Extraction in Analog Black Holes"
• Plant Sciences: second place: Anna Xu of TJHSST, "Selective sweeps and genomic differentiation between northern and southern populations of the woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca)"
• Systems Software and Intelligent Machines: second place: Divjot Bedi and Rishabh Misra of TJHSST, "BMCI-Net: A Novel Approach to Non-Invasive, Fully Mobile Prosthetic Control Using Robust Pattern Detection and Filtration of EMG and EEG Signals Through Supervised Machine Learning"; third place: Avyuk Dixit, Saketh Gabbita, and Havish Malladi of TJHSST, "A Novel Approach to Contextual Violence Detection"

Special awards were presented as follows:

• American Meteorological Society: Mikhail Mints of McLean High School, "The Effect of Topography on Air Pollution Predicted by a Computer Model"
• Central Virginia Chapter INCOSE: second place, Avyuk Dixit, Havish Malladi, and Saketh Gabbita of TJHSST, "A Novel Approach to Contextual Violence Detection"; third place, Divjot Bedi and Rishabh Misra of TJHSST, "BMCI-Net: A Novel Approach to Non-Invasive, Fully Mobile Prosthetic Control Using Robust Pattern Detection and Filtration of EMG and EEG Signals Through Supervised Machine Learning"
• Leidos Young VA Researcher: Neeyanth Kopparapu of TJHSST, "MRI Image Synthesis for the Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease Using Deep Learning"
• Leidos: honorable mention: Ishan Kalburge and Agah Ebrahimi of Woodson High School, "Event Related Potential based Machine Learning Approach to Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis"; honorable mentions: Neal Bayya and George Tang of TJHSST, "ClearCam: Enabling Self-Driving Cars to See Through Fog with GPU-Accelerated Stereo Imaging and Deep Learning"; honorable mention: Joshua Salazar of Madison High School, "Novel Genetically Engineered Bacteriophage Platform for Programmable Therapeutics"; Jason Chen of TJHSST, "Optimization of a Methalox Liquid Rocket Engine; and Saketh Gabbita, Havish Malladi"; and Avyuk Dixit of TJHSST, "A Novel Approach to Contextual Violence Detection"
• Mu Alpha Theta: Shannon Gallagher of South Lakes High School, "The Effect of Shuffling on the Card Count Of A Deck of Cards"
• Office of Naval Research: Akshay Subramaniam of Oakton High School, "The Effect of Gel Base Used on an Edible Water Bottle's Packaging Efficiency"
• U.S. Air Force: Luke Mrini of Lake Braddock Secondary School, "Modelling Energy Extraction in Analog Black Holes"
• Virginia Bioscience Foundation: first place: Neeyanth Kopparapu of TJHSST, "MRI Image Synthesis for the Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease Using Deep Learning"; second place: Junhyun Chong of TJHSST, "A chemiluminescent dual-aptasensor capable of simultaneously quantifying prostate specific antigen and vascular endothelial growth factor"; third place: David Toomer of Hayfield Secondary School, "CeRNetwork: A Platform for in silico Discovery and Classification of Competing Endogenous RNA Sequences for Multi-Omic Network Diffusion and Novel miRNA-Sequestering Drug Design"
• Virginia Dental Association-Animal Sciences: Korrina Gidwani of TJHSST, "Retinoic Acid on SFM Nerve Cord Regeneration in Procambarus Clarkii"
• Virginia Dental Association-Biochemistry: Junhyun Chong of TJHSST, "A chemiluminescent dual-aptasensor capable of simultaneously quantifying prostate specific antigen and vascular endothelial growth factor"
• Virginia Dental Association-Engineering Mechanics: Alexandros Pfoser and Yash Amin of Woodson High School, "3d Printer"
• Virginia Dental Association-Microbiology: Sanika Karandikar of TJHSST, "The Efficacy of Photosensitizer Mediated Photodynamic Treatment in Eradicating Staphylococcus Epidermis Biofilms"; and Saijai Supanklang, Miamar Burgos-Rosario, and Sarah Syed of Hayfield Secondary School, "Cyanocide: A Novel Strategy for Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation via Initiation of Programmed Cell Death"
• Virginia Section of American Water Works Association: Saijai Supanklang, Miamar Burgos-Rosario, and Sarah Syed of Hayfield Secondary School, "Cyanocide: A Novel Strategy for Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation via Initiation of Programmed Cell Death"
• Yale Science and Engineering Award: Neeyanth Kopparapu of TJHSST, "MRI Image Synthesis for the Diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease Using Deep Learning"