Intel Science Talent Search

Intel STS, Science Talent Search, USA Science Fair, USA Science Competition, Intel Science Fair

This year’s Intel Science Talent Search winner is quite possibly the competition’s best of all time. The 15 year-old has already changed the world.

The Intel Science Talent Search is the single most prestigious science competition for high school seniors in the United States. It’s the ultimate science fair championship where young science researchers go head to head with papers spanning chemistry, biology, psychology, physics, computer science, and more (they present their work if chosen to be finalists). But it’s not always when the winner of the Intel Science Talent search creates something that can actually change the world right here and now. Not in ten years. Now. Jack Andraka, this year’s winner, has done just that.

Andraka, at fifteen years old, is by all accounts a prodigy. Just listen to him speak. So what’d he create? He created a sensor that can detect pancreatic cancer, a disease that usually isn’t detected until it’s too late. According to a “Yahoo News” article by Nadine Kalinauskas on the Intel STS winner, “Current pancreatic cancer-detection methods are ‘woefully ineffective,’ leaving most cancers undiagnosed until their final stages. By then, it’s usually too late for treatment. ‘[Andraka's] novel patent-pending sensor has proved to be 28 times faster, 28 times less expensive, and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests,’ the Daily Mail reports. Andraka believes his simple detection test would help patients identify the disease at its earliest stages, before it becomes invasive, and possibly boosting survival rates of the deadly cancer to ‘close to 100 per cent.’

And the 15 year-old was turned down by a ton of professors when he approached them about wanting to work on this in their labs. That makes his remarkable sensor even cooler. What chutzpah he had to approach all of those professors! Shame on them for turning him down. We imagine they regret that decision now. Congratulations to Jack Andraka on winning the Intel Science Talent Search but, way more importantly, on creating a patent-pending sensor to accurately detect pancreatic cancer at a much earlier stage. It’s truly remarkable. This 15 year-old has already changed the world with his enormous contribution to mankind before he even goes to college! Now that’s something. If you’re a high school student interested in science research, may his story inspire you!

Check out video of Andraka here:

Science Research and College Admissions

For talented students whose passion is science research, a new competition has been announced to add to the list of the Intel Science Talent Search and the Siemens Competition. The new competition has been created by…you guessed it…Google. It’s called the Google Global Science Fair. According to Google, “There will be 3 finalist winners, one in each age category 13-14, 15-16, 17-18. One of of the 3 finalist winners will be selected as the Grand Prize winner.”

According to Google’s Global Science Fair site, “The Grand Prize winner(s) plus one parent or guardian per winner will win an amazing 10 day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions. Traveling aboard the National Geographic Endeavour the winner(s) will visit Darwin’s living laboratory and experience up-close encounters with unique species such as flightless cormorants, marine iguanas, and domed giant tortoises.”

Oh and the winner also receives $50,000 to use towards their education (it would be split if it’s a team project). The winner also can get a virtual one-year internship through The LEGO Group and get their name on new LEGO designs! How cool. Finalists will receive a $25,000 scholarship to be used towards their further education.

Check out the Google Global Science Fair 2011 page.

And check out our related blog: The Grand Prize of Caltech Admissions or our Peterson’s article on Talented Students.

The Grand Prize of Caltech Admissions

Admissions counselors at Caltech celebrated last year when they landed a major recruit. This student was not the 7’0, 260 lb. inside post presence that could help transform their basketball team from the most notorious loser – they had not won a single conference game in 26 years, since before the fall of the Berlin Wall – into an NCAA contender. This student was not the next great QB with remarkable foot speed and accuracy to invigorate Caltech’s football squad and lead them to the Rose Bowl down the street. That team was eliminated long ago.

The student that the admissions counselors at Caltech landed was the winner of the Intel Science Talent Search, the most prestigious science competition for high school students in the country. At a school that boasts 31 alumni and faculty members who have won the Nobel Prize, 65 who have won the coveted National Medal of Science or Technology, the highest average starting salary in the country, and the Sheldon character from CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory,” the Intel winner is always the golden prize for Caltech admissions counselors.

But on Tuesday, the fate of Caltech’s beleaguered basketball team changed. In what has to go down as one of the great upsets in the history of sports, Caltech upstaged conference rival Occidental in the closing seconds of the game when senior Ryan Elmquist sunk a free throw and Occidental’s half-court heave fell short. The ecstatic fans in attendance immediately rushed the court and celebration erupted all across Caltech’s Pasadena campus. On that day, we were all Caltech fans rooting on the underdog to begin a new tradition.

In a few short months, Ryan Elmquist, the hero of Caltech, will move to Silicon Valley where he will work as a computer software engineer for Google as so many bright and motivated Caltech students have done before him. And admissions counselors at Caltech are now clicking their way through applications in the hope of finding their next Nobel Prize winners.

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