2021 Winners
Life Sciences
Animal Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Swetha Velayutham & Vyshnavi Poruri | Plano East Senior High School | The Effect of PAR-4 on the Fertility and Progeny of C.elegans as a Potential Therapeutic Agent for Hereditary Chronic Inflammatory Diseases
- Second Place: Zaina Siddiqi & Rotem Ris | Academy of Science and Technology | The Effects of Curcumin on the Regeneration of Dugesia tigrina Succeeding Exposure to Ionizing Radiation
- Third Place: Vaishnuv Thiagarajan | Westwood High School | Simarouba Amara as a Novel Therapeutic and Preventive Agent against Carcinogenesis in Planaria (Dugesia Dorotocephala)
Junior Division
- First Place: Adam Siddiqi | McCullough Junior High School | The Effects of Lead Contamination on the Regeneration of H. littoralis
- Second Place: Maya Haws | Mt. Sacred Heart School | Are Birds and Squirrels Attracted to a Certain Color?
- Third Place: Yash Dharankar | Rice Middle School | Comparison of Varroa Mite Treatments for Honey Bees
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Sidhya Peddinti | Plano East Senior High School | ParkinSensor: Computer Vision and Ensemble Machine Learning-Based Early Diagnosis for Parkinson’s Disease using Neuromuscular Biomarkers
- Second Place: Siddhanth Pachipala | Academy of Science and Technology | Prediction of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Through Prosodic and Linguistic Machine Learning Models
- Third Place: Pranav Somani | Academy of Science and Technology | A Novel Bio-signal Based Machine Learning System for the Detection, Tracking and Intervention of Anxiety Disorders
Junior Division
- First Place: Ramya Elangovan | Thomas Horace Rogers School | Effect of “Stress Management And Relaxation Techniques” (SMART): Mindfulness Meditation and Progressive Muscle Relaxation on Memory and Vital Signs in Intensive Care Providers during COVID-19 — A Three-Arm, Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial
- Second Place: Siri Peddinti | Otto Middle School | PiRest – An Eye Fatigue Alert Device Using Computer Vision
- Third Place: Sumayyah Jilani | Harmony Academy – Euless Middle School | The Primacy and Recency Effects
Biochemistry
Senior Division
- First Place: Suran Somawardana | Basis San Antonio High School | Wearable Electrochemical Sweat Sensor for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD): Year II
- Second Place: Sophia Zhang & Ashley Zhang | Jasper High School | The Effects of Aqueous Plant Extracts on the Inhibition of α-Amylase’s Ability to Hydrolyze Alpha-linked Polysaccharides
- Third Place: Noah Mathai | Plano West Senior High School | Agar-Ponics: Novel Agarose-based Agricultural System Synergizing Soil Integrated GM-Bacteria and Aquaponics
Junior Division
- First Place: Samuel Grine | Lincoln Middle School | I’m in a Pickle
- Second Place: Melina Kumar | Brookside Intermediate School | Reducing the Risk of Diabetes: A Novel Approach for the Development of a Sensitive Glucagon ELISA
- Third Place: Shravan Manoj | Murphy Middle School | Which Disinfectant Material Works Best in Killing Bacteria?
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Richard Lin | Bellaire Senior High School | Microbial-based Cancer Therapy
- Second Place: Kaden Legore | Seguin High School | Mask Mitigation
- Third Place: Aaditya Arun | Harmony School of Innovation – Sugar Land | Effect of Excess Fluoride on Reproductive Outcome
Junior Division
- First Place: Sharmada Palakurthi | Baker Middle School | A Novel Non-Invasive Method of Testing Glucose For Diabetic Population
- Second Place: Savera Karia | Spring Branch Academic Institute Middle School | Can β-D-Glucans, a Protein Found in Dates, Inhibit Cancer Cell Proliferation?
- Third Place: Gracelynn Singer | Isbill Junior High School | Were You Raised in a Barn?
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Senior Division
- First Place: Parisa Vaziri | Plano East Senior High School | The Neuro-Protective Role of Select Transcription Factors in a PINK1 Loss-of-Function Based Model of Neurodegeneration in Drosophila Melanogaster
- Second Place: Paridhi Latawa | Lasa High School | Identification of Synovial Tissue-based Biomarkers for Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Third Place: Maegha Tipirneni | Friendswood High School | Effect of Smoking on TGF-β Signaling in Breast Cancer Patients
Junior Division
- First Place: Mariem Banales | McAllen – Cathey Middle School | Family Fingerprint Patterns
- Second Place: Brooklyn Thompson | Atlanta Middle School | The Effect of Masks on Respiration
- Third Place: Cuauhtemoc Zamora | Kaffie Middle School | The Effects of Heat Shock on Plasmid Uptake
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Senior Division
- First Place: Govardhan Poondi & John Rho | Plano West Senior High School | Non-Invasive, Two-Channel EEG Hearing Aid to Address the Cocktail Party Problem via Multi-Speaker Auditory Attention Decoding
- Second Place: Russell Li | St. John’s School High School | Deep Neural Network for Robust Single-Cell DNA Methylation Detection
- Third Place: Hannah Guan | Basis San Antonio High School | The Genetics of Human Aging: Predicting Age and Age-Related Diseases by Deep Mining High Dimensional Biomarker Data
Junior Division
- First Place: Shaumprovo Debnath | Keystone Middle School | Using Machine Learning and Neural Data from the Brain to Create an Artificial Intelligence Capable of Recognizing Thought Words
- Second Place: Caroline Garcia | John Drugan School | Insect Armageddon in the Sun City
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Sriya Teerdhala & Sanja Hiremath | Plano East Senior High School | A Third Year Study on the Bioremediation of Tetracycline Polluted Soils: How Antibiotic Resistance can Reduce Antibiotic Pollution in the Environment and a Solution to Antibiotic-Pollution Related Crop Failure
- Second Place: Keshav Chandrasekhara | Uplift North Hills High School | Which Organic Sorbent Most Effectively Complements Triton X-100 Surfactant in Removing Oil in Oil Spills?
- Third Place: Aseel Rawashdeh | Anderson High School | Larvicidal “Trojan-horse”: Experimentally Developing a Novel Low-Cost and Eco-Friendly Mosquito Vector Control Treatment
Junior Division
- First Place: Josephine Schultz | Bradley Middle School | Effect of Light Pollution on Chrysalis Stage of Painted Lady Butterfly
- Second Place: Joaquin Martinez | Lincoln Middle School | Hydroponics or Standard Agriculture; Which Yields Larger Fields?
- Third Place: Nitya Kaligotla | McCullough Junior High School | Does Biodegradable Plastic affect Plant Growth?
Microbiology
Senior Division
- First Place: Shriya Bhat | Plano East Senior High School | Combating Bacterial Biofilm II: Generating a Non-toxic Multi-pathway Targeted Cocktail Treatment to Inhibit Proliferation of Pseudomonas Biofilm
- Second Place: Lamisa Mahmud | Pflugerville High School | Comparing the Effects of Microbial Biofortification Techniques on the Nitrogen Levels and Germination of Brassicaceae Microgreens
- Third Place: Weixuan Yan | Plano West Senior High School | A Machine Learning Approach to Optimize CRISPR-Cas13d RNA Targeting as an Antiviral Therapeutics
Junior Division
- First Place: Madeleine Mack | China Spring Middle School | A Comparative Analysis of Edible Triglyceride-Based Preservatives: Evaluating Bos Taurus and Gallus Gallus Domesticus
- Second Place: Lyla Arnold | Young Women’s Leadership Academy Middle School | Bioluminescent Responses to LED Stimuli on Pyrocystis Fusiformis
- Third Place: Pavan Ahluwalia | Harmony School of Innovation Middle School – Fort Worth | Comparative Evaluation of Salt Water Rinse with Cetylpyridinium Chloride Against Oral Microbes
Plant Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Zach Vazhekatt | Coppell High School | Longevity Of Plant-Based Bioremediation In Water
- Second Place: Keira Tran | Pflugerville High School | The Effect of Concentrations of Copper-Contaminated Soil on Vigna Unguiculata and Phaseolus Lunatus Growth and Brine Shrimp Mortality
- Third Place: Lorenzo Huerta | Austin High School | The Effect of Type of Substrate on Growth of Radishes
Junior Division
- First Place: Stephen Sims | Saint Matthew Catholic School | The Use of Abscicic Acid and UV Light in Plant’s Growth and Improved Water Usage
- Second Place: Itzel Ramos | McAllen – Fossum Middle School | The Influence of Artificial Light on Hydroponics
- Third Place: Prisha Bhat | Otto Middle School | Phytoremediation: An Affordable Non-Toxic Approach to Extracting Heavy Metals from Soil using Hyperaccumulators with Chelating Agents in Situ
Translational Medical Sciences
Senior Division
- First Place: Sameer Parameshwar, Venu Poruri & Sridatta Teerdhala | Plano East Senior High School | ProteCount: An AI-Based Reader for Rapid Protein Quantification
- Second Place: Kevin Song | Debakey High School for Health Professions | Immunotherapy of Human Prostate Cancer Utilizing the Bacterial Protein Flagellin
- Third Place: Kashish Kumar | Science Academy High School | Human iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocyte Model Reveals the Transcriptomic Bases of SARS-CoV-2 Infection Induced Myocardial Injury
Junior Division
- First Place: Kaveesh Koswatta | Koswatta Home School – Middle School | Mask Filtration Efficiency Toward Preventing Community Spread of Pathogens
- Second Place: Elizabeth Reilly | Saint Matthew Catholic School | The Role of Leech Saliva and Shisho in the Inflammation and Healing of Diabetic Wounds
- Third Place: Christopher McDonald | John Drugan School | Sleep Deprivation and Its Effects on Physical and Cognitive Function
Physical Sciences
Biomedical Engineering
Senior Division
- First Place: Aditya Chebrolu | Independence High School | FallWatch: A Novel Approach for Through-Wall Fall Detection in Real-Time for the Elderly using Artificial Intelligence
- Second Place: Alay Shah | Plano West Senior High School | Generating Functional MRI (fMRI) Images via Eye-Tracking Classification for Artificial Brain Scans
- Third Place: Ibrahim Al-Akash | Veteran’s Memorial High School | Max Health: Developing a User-Friendly Smartphone and Smartwatch Application with Intelligent Textiles Biosensors to Detect Arrhythmias, Dysglycemia, Neurological Disorders, and Predict Asthma Attack Risk
Junior Division
- First Place: Donovan Burke | Knox Junior High School | An Innovative Mask Design to Safely Scope Patients
- Second Place: Federico Romero & Diego Romero | Kaffie Middle School | Optimizing Leverage and Strength In An Articulating Prosthetic
- Third Place: Alazne Gallegos | SSG Manuel R. Puentes Middle School | Relax in Your Mask
Chemistry
Senior Division
- First Place: Zhi-Wei Zeng | Zeng Homeschool | Keeping our water away from FOG
- Second Place: Madelyn Puza | Academy of Science and Technology | Production of Alternative Bioplastics Enhanced by Corn Stover Materials and Natural Fibers
- Third Place: Anjali Iyer | Jasper High School | Antibiotic Apocalypse: The Treatment of Antibiotic-Resistant Diseases via ROS-mediated Cell Wall Damage through the Phytochemical Constituent Eugenol in a Drug Synergism
Junior Division
- First Place: Ryan Lee | Vandeventer Middle School | Natural pH Indicator
- Second Place: Sandul Manage | Knox Junior High School | Vitamin C in Juice
- Third Place: Curtis Chui | Canyon Ridge Middle School | Density and Heat Capacity
Embedded Systems
Senior Division
- First Place: Anushka Sridhar | Plano East Senior High School | Smart Parkinson’s Strap- to Dynamically Detect and Mitigate the Tremors of Parkinson’s Patients
- Second Place: Aneesh Vanguri | Westwood High School | Using Sensory Substitution to Create an Electronic Navigation Aid for the Visually Impaired
- Third Place: Abrar Rahman | Harmony School of Endeavor High School – Austin | Wearables for Parkinson’s Disease Monitoring
Junior Division
- First Place: Eunice-Jia-Min Yong | West Ridge Middle School | Safe Scan
- Second Place: Daniel Tauhert | Renner Middle School | Smart Handwashing System
- Third Place: Amelia Krajmalnik & Morgan Bowers | Frankford Middle School | Catching Canine Cancer
Energy: Sustainable Materials & Design
Senior Division
- First Place: Greyson Wong | Williams High School | The Optimal Structural Design of an Energy Efficient and Aerodynamic Solar Car
- Second Place: Rishab Ghosh | Academy of Science and Technology | Microalgal Lipids: The Effects of Cultivation Temperature on Microalgal Lipid Production for Biofuel
- Third Place: Namila Rahmani | Science Academy High School | Perovskite Material Based Piezoelectric and Triboelectric Energy Film for Energy Harvesting
Junior Division
- First Place: Inu Baek | Knox Junior High School | Reducing Energy Consumption with Condition-Based Illumination
- Second Place: Jude Sadi | Austin Peace Academy Middle School | Motion, Motion What’s Your Commotion?: Converting Motion Energy into Electricity
- Third Place: Eric Ng | Hendrick Middle School | Eco Friendly House Designs
Engineering Mechanics
Senior Division
- First Place: Ved Ganesh | Dulles High School | Stable Shores: An Experimental Set-Up to Test Economical Alternatives to Conventional Coastal Erosion Control
- Second Place: Joyce Wong & Alisa Noro | Academy of Science and Technology | Assessing the Efficacy of Tsunami Mitigations Using Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Third Place: Felipe Aceves | Academy of Science and Technology | Applying Ionization and an Electrical Field to Design and Construct an Ionic Thruster Propelled by Air
Junior Division
- First Place: Aarushi Pandey | McCullough Junior High School | Intelligent and Autonomous Firefighting Rescue Vehicle
- Second Place: Jordan Thomas | Harmony School of Innovation Middle School – Fort Worth | Hydropower: Putting Water to Work
- Third Place: Sarina Mih | Challenger School Middle School – Avery Ranch | What’s the Stitch?
Environmental Engineering
Senior Division
- First Place: Scout Skaggs | Granbury High School | A Hybrid Bioplastic and Its Properties
- Second Place: Nandini Ramachandran & Mukund Ramachandran | Plano West Senior High School | Building a Dual-Axis Solar Tracker Enabled by a Gradient Boosting ML Model to Increase the Electricity Generated by Solar Panels
- Third Place: Mehaa Amirthalingam | Travis High School | Retrofitting an existing single family home with Grey Water Collection from the Shower and Studying the Efficiency and Issues of Recycling Grey Water for Toilet Flushing after Microfiltration
Junior Division
- First Place: Saachit Rathi, Nagavenkat Modugula & Aren Nag | Otto Middle School | Autonomous Flying with Pixhawk and Raspberry Pi – Object Detection Using Tensorflow and OpenCV for Real World Problem Solving
- Second Place: Gwen Rodriguez | Harmony Science Academy – El Paso Middle School | Using Fruit to Purify Drinking Water
- Third Place: Ella Sanders | Isbill Junior High School | Smoke Filtration with Plants
Materials Science
Senior Division
- First Place: Christopher Huh | Westwood High School | Carbon Dioxide Conversion to Hydrocarbon Fuel Utilizing Metal Catalyst
- Second Place: Aithreya Thoppay | Jasper High School | A Novel Hydrophobic Corn Stover Sponge With the Implementation of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles and Various Alterations in Material Chemistry
- Third Place: Sohi Patel | Academy of Science and Technology | Scalable and Sustainable Synthesis of a Novel, Bio-Based Polyurethane Foam System Incorporating Industrial Byproducts and Waste
Junior Division
- First Place: Justin Huff | China Spring Middle School | Evaluating the Impact of Paint finish on Thermodynamics of Habitable Structures
- Second Place: Ashley Thomas | Haggard Middle School | Don’t Slip
- Third Place: Halil Tunc | Harmony School of Endeavor Middle School – Austin | Lead vs. Aluminum Radiation Blocker
Mathematics
Senior Division
- First Place: Shrey Joshi & Ishaan Javali | Plano East Senior High School | GLAS: A Global Landslide Analytics System
- Second Place: Pratham Babaria & Ethan Chandra | Harmony School of Endeavor High School – Austin | A Mathematically Driven Physical Analysis and Confirmation Study of Exoplanet HD 189733 b and Others in Close-By Star Systems Using Principles of Machine Learning/Linear Algebra, Bayesian Statistical Tests, and Computational Python Programming
- Third Place: Amitha Mandava | Plano East Senior High School | An Efficient Loop-Based Bus Transit Routing Network
Junior Division
- First Place: Abigail Olmstead | Greater Waco Christian Home Educators – Middle School | Can Cuteness be Calculated? – The Golden Ratio in Baby Animal Facial Proportions
- Second Place: Paul Gonzales | Pflugerville Middle School | Stars and Their Habitable Zones
- Third Place: Aryan Rajpal & Simon Farruqui | Pearson Middle School | Using Graph Theory to Create a Solution in Routing Internet Traffic
Physics and Astronomy
Senior Division
- First Place: Sam Christian | Lasa High School | A Possible Alignment Between Orbits of Visual Binary Stars and Their Planetary Systems
- Second Place: Camille Chiu | College Station High School | Predicting the Impact of Stellar Kinematics and Dynamics on Habitability in the Milky Way
- Third Place: Aditya Panda | Plano West Senior High School | A Deep Learning Approach for Identification and Classification of Exoplanets
Junior Division
- First Place: Erin Beall | Otto Middle School | Future of Rainbows Year 2
- Second Place: Vivian Pina | Young Women’s Leadership Academy Middle School | Which Nut Contains the Most Energy?
- Third Place: Ingrid Castro | Navasota Jr. High School | Impact Countdown
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Senior Division
- First Place: Leonardo De Farias | Southcrest Christian School High School | Using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) Image Recognition to Program the Artificially Learned C3BO: Cancer Blood Oncologist
- Second Place: Anysha Choudhuri | Franklin High School | Out of this World: 3D Printing Structures for Lunar Habitats
- Third Place: Benjamin Gracia | Brownsville – Pace High School | Float My Boat – Submergible Robotic System Used to Clean Calm Bodies of Water
Junior Division
- First Place: Eshaan Chachad | Rice Middle School | Transforming Colors to Assist People with Color Deuteranopia
- Second Place: Arian Gutierrez | La Joya – Lorenzo De Zavala Middle School | Slow the Spread of COVID-19
- Third Place: Aditya Lingam | Stiles Middle School | How Can Robots Help in Everyday Life?
Systems Software
Senior Division
- First Place: Daniel Yamakov | Academy of Science and Technology | StockSy: A Stock Prediction and Analysis Toolkit Using Nonparametric Regression
- Second Place: Yifan Guo | Texas Academy of Mathematics and Sciences High School | Symbiotic Neural and Graph-Based Question Answering
- Third Place: Navya Ramakrishnan | Plano Senior High School | A Brain Computer Interface System for the Improvement of Cognitive and Communication Abilities for Patients with Neuromuscular Disorders
Junior Division
- First Place: Ishika Kothari | Rice Middle School | I Spy To Classify; Enhancing A Visual Image Recognition Software to Classify Various Objects
- Second Place: Raeleigh Stolle & Ariel Asare | China Spring Middle School | Utilizing Databases for Identification of Unknown Allergens via a Mobile App
- Third Place: Ram Sivaraman | Canyon Vista Middle School | A New Method for Secure Password Generation Using Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients
