More than 70 IUSD students secured top honors at the recent Orange County Science and Engineering Fair (OCSEF) across diverse categories.
Out of these students, 39 students will now head to the California Science and Engineering Fair (CSEF) and/or ThermoFisher Junior Innovators Challenge (TFJIC), scheduled to take place on April 11-12. This prestigious event will bring together some of the brightest young minds from across the state, providing our students a platform to showcase their innovative research and compete at the highest level.
The competition, divided into Junior and Senior levels, commenced last September, inviting students to submit their STEM projects across 20 category topics. This year, over 800 students from across Orange County participated. The winners in each category received a medal, certificate and cash prize.
Several IUSD students also won Special Award prizes, some of which also included cash rewards, from various STEM organizations.
"IUSD is proud of our student participants and their remarkable projects," stated Director of STEM Bob Curley. "Their accomplishments speak volumes about the commitment of our students and the guidance of our teachers, who continually inspire a profound appreciation for scientific inquiry.
Congratulations to all who participated and those who are moving on to the State competition!
Junior Division
Sophie Chen - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Brywood Elementary
Is All Similar Strength SPF and UPS Sun Protection the Same at Decreasing UV Light Exposure? From Sunscreen and Swimsuits to Sports Shirts and Sunguard Soap…Let Us Find Out!
Dylan Toy - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Deerfield Elementary
Inducing Monocarpic Senescence to Increase Fruit Yield of Solanum lycopersicum
Zain Alam - CSEF Nominee
Jeffrey Trail Middle
Engineering Seeds for a Food-Secure World: Optimizing Alginate-Based Seed Coatings to Improve Germination in Saline Soils
Harrison Gu - CSEF Nominee
Rancho San Joaquin Middle
VisionShield: Adaptive Grid Dimming Visor for Real-Time Sun Glare Mitigation
Emily Fan - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Rancho San Joaquin Middle
What’s eating my teeth?
Zixin Zhao - CSEF Nominee
Rancho San Joaquin Middle
Banana Fibers: A Scaffold for Cell Adhesion
Julian Park - CSEF Nominee
Rancho San Joaquin Middle
Analyzing the effect of AI Assistance on Knowledge Acquisition
Nikita Iyer - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Santiago Hills Elementary
Can biodegradable polymer hydrogels improve water conservation in soil by increasing absorption, reducing evaporation, and supporting plant growth?
Geeta Putlur - CSEF Nominee
Sierra Vista Middle
Living Air Purification System: Bioengineered Soil Microbiomes Enhanced for Indoor Phytoremediation
Rene Kwon - CSEF Nominee
Sierra Vista Middle
Modulation of Pseudomonas fluorescens Biofilm and Quorum Sensing Pathways by Natural and Synthetic Inhibitors Under Sublethal Antibiotic Stress
Om Inamdar, Anish Tatireddy - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Sierra Vista Middle
Discovering The Components In Advertisements That Draw The Most Engagement From Viewers.
David Cha - CSEF Nominee
Sierra Vista Middle
The Power In Plants
Enya Pal - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Turtle Rock Elementary
Cohabitating with Coyotes in Suburban Neighborhoods
Bea Lansigan - CSEF & TFJIC Nominee
Venado Middle
LaunchIt! The MotoLaunch System: An Arduino-Based Paper Plane Launcher for Consistent Flight Times
Vivaan Sehgal, Prahas Yalamanchili, Adhish Nimmagadda - TFJIC Nominee
Brywood Elementary
Rack and Pinion Speed Bump
Shannon Ge
Lakeside Middle
Toilet Paper: The Assassins of the Sewage
Tabitha Tio
Plaza Vista K-8
Eco-Friendly or Traditional: Best Material for Sound Absorption
Alexander Wong
Rancho San Joaquin Middle
One Good Thing: The Effect of Daily Gratitude Practice on Student Well-Being and Satisfaction
Grace Wang - TFJIC Nominee
Santiago Hills Elementary
Sailing at the Speed of Sound (Well, Almost!)
Tej Kashyap - TFJIC Nominee
Santiago Hills Elementary
Long Live Clean Produce!
Aria Yatavelli
Sierra Vista Middle
Allerdetect - Food Allergen Detector App
Daniel Zhai, Violet Bian, Jeremy Bian - TFJIC Nominee
Turtle Rock Elementary
Bike Safety and Surrounding Awareness Sensor
Betul Semerci
Turtle Rock Elementary
Invasive Ant Dominance
Anchit Sinha - TFJIC Nominee
Venado Middle
SmartCore Insert: A Modular Solution to Prevent Heat Season Grid Outages
Winnie Li
Vista Verde K-8
Testing Memory Retention in Dogs Using Treat Location Tasks
Jay Aggarwal, Jayden Rho
Santiago Hills Elementary
The Most Efficient Parachute
Dia Mandaviya
Santiago Hills Elementary
Is Winning a Claw Machine Luck, Skill, or Science? A 120-Trial Study Using Lego Technic Robotics
Aisha Nacham
Turtle Rock Elementary
Shell-Shocking Pollution: Optimization of Copper Removal from Drinking Water Using Recycled Eggshell Biosorbent
Siaansh Bhadauria
Venado Middle
Quantum Against Quantum: Using a Quantum Cryptographic System For Increased Database Security
Ella Chan, Juliette Kim-Yang
Woodbury Elementary - Irvine
House Insulation
Kayla Tain
Bonita Canyon Elementary
Sustainable Irrigation System using Archimedes Screw
Kavisha Gupta
Deerfield Elementary
The Silent Struggle Beneath The Surface
Shreyan Sarkar, Vidhaan Thapak
Santiago Hills Elementary
Project-Ile
Sean Tran, Lucas Shevchenko
Stone Creek Elementary
Magnet Lock Box
Arnav Bhardia
Venado Middle
TextBand
Sonya Thumar, Amelia Chang
Woodbury Elementary - Irvine
From Lab to Field: Can Biogels Quench the Soil's Thirst?
Senior Divison
Atharva Soni, Yash Kher - CSEF Nominee
Northwood High
SparkNet - Transparent Prediction of Wildfire Potential in Southern California
Joonseo Chung, Minseo Chung - CSEF Nominee
Northwood High
Multimodal Music: Inferring Musical Emotion through Non-auditory Cues
Bowen Wu - CSEF Nominee
Portola High
A Contrastive Multi-View Self-Supervised Framework for Network Intrusion Detection with Finite-Difference Temporal Modeling (CMVS-FTM)
Sumin Kim - CSEF Nominee
Portola High
Stopping safely: A study of the best forward collision alerts
Ivana Poon - CSEF Nominee
University High
Response of tardigrades to reactive oxidative species (ROS) perturbation in the presence of exogenous antioxidants
Ian Jia, Derek Tran - CSEF Nominee
University High
OptiPress: Empowering Glaucoma Patients with Accessible At-Home Intraocular Pressure Monitoring
Annika Chatterjee - CSEF Nominee
University High
Engineered Endogenous Exosome-Packed Phenyl Boronate, a biochemical redox scavenger as an effective sensitizer for immunotherapy in Cervical Carcinogenesis
Shreyan Chatterjee - CSEF Nominee
University High
Novel Mechanistic Risk Mapping of California wild-fire pollutants-induced endothelial dysfunction linked Cardiac Arrhythmia
Xiaoru Guo - CSEF Nominee
University High
Tuna-like Carangiform Robotic Fish
Alexander Miller - CSEF Nominee
Woodbridge High
Universal Quantum Error Mitigation via Random Inverse Depolarizing Approximation
Carson Lv, Aadhi Suresh
Northwood High
IoT-Based Smart Parking Space Detection and Management System with AI Computer Vision
Parsa Jokar - CSEF Nominee
Northwood High
Evaluating Hyaluronidase as Therapeutic Enzyme for Myxomatous Degeneration using a Biocompatible Hydrogel Modeling Pathophysiology
Sandhya Shanmuga-Nathan - CSEF Nominee
Portola High
Accelerating Transmission Spectroscopy of Exoplanets for Biosignature Detection Using Machine Learning
Jaden Ryu - CSEF Nominee
Portola High
The impact of short-term CO2 exposure on student cognitive ability
Michael Jian - CSEF Nominee
University High
Why Brain Change Matters: Longitudinal MRI for Early Alzheimer’s Risk
Avery Hexun - CSEF Nominee
University High
Conditional Controls on Kelvin-Wave-Driven Initiation of Historical El Nino Events
Daniel Nam - CSEF Nominee
University High
Effects of Beta Cell Specific Smc3 Loss on Islet Cell Identity and Inflammation
Gordon Xu - CSEF Nominee
University High
Decoding Human Depression Through Genomics
Kevin Chou, Aaron Kim - CSEF Nominee
University High
Using machine learning to predict parkinsons via vocal biomarkers
Nathan Truong - CSEF Nominee
Woodbridge High
Multi-Label LLM Pretraining With a Smaller "Teacher Model"
Anish Kumar, Neel Mehta
Irvine High
Simulating Improved Quantum Fidelity from Hardware Through Loss-Aware Ancilla Decoding
Pritha Sankar
Irvine High
Evolutionary Conservation and Structural Mapping of the Coronavirus Membrane (M) Protein Across SARS-CoV-2 and Sarbecovirus Lineages
Erika Mead
Irvine High
R Shiny App to Track Acute Chronic Workload Ratio
Haiyun Rui, Chen Zhou
Northwood High
Evaluating the Structural and Degradative Properties of Polylactic Acid (PLA), Starch-Based, and Fiber-Reinforced Bioplastics for Medical Use
Ryan Jo
Northwood High
Using Siamese Networks Trained on Similarity Scores to Classify Rocks and Minerals
Yejoon Choi
Northwood High
Quantitative Analysis of the Effect of a Remineralization Filter on Reverse Osmosis (RO) Filtered Water
Nishvith Sudhakar
Northwood High
Quantitative Modeling of Glioblastoma Cell Density to Optimize Surgical Resection Margins
Mahima Wuppalapati
Portola High
Examining the Effect of Saline Water and Vibrio vulnificus on Gut Tight Junction Protein Expression and Inflammation Markers
Eugene Dai
University High
TrackSight: Online Navigation for Disabilities
Nolan Soo
Irvine High
Cost-Optimized, Long-Life AA Rechargeable Battery with an Electroplated-Zinc Anode and PVA-Calcium Chloride Hydrogel Electrolyte
Avril Eich
Northwood High
Reducing Single-Use Plastic Pollution
Driti Rajkumar
Portola High
Breaking the Bacterial Barrier: Enhanced Targeted Therapy on the Lipopolysaccharide of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Using a Phage-Antibiotic Cocktail
Samriddho Bhowal
University High
PreFlight AI
Andrei Saramukov
University High
Quantifying Cognitive Entropy in Multi-Agent LLM Orchestration Layers
Eshaan Pal
University High
AI Based Elderly Fall Prediction Using Gait Features from Commercial Wearable Devices
Sophia Liu
University High
Classification of Cells in Bone Marrow Histopathology Slides of Acute Myeloid Leukemia with Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) Through Transfer Learning
Jiexi Rao
Woodbridge High
Airfoil Shape Study on High Performance Glider Flight — An online airfoil design kit and airfoil optimization
Special Awards
Satkritah Srinivasan
White Coat Award, In Honor of President Crispina Chong-Han, MD
Orange County Medical Association
Rate My Risk for Cardiovascular Disease
Kavisha Gupta
Dr. Harald Biessmann Award
Harald Biessmann Memorial
The Silent Struggle Beneath The Surface
Zain Alam
David Walkington Memorial Award
OCSEF
Engineering Seeds for a Food-Secure World: Optimizing Alginate-Based Seed Coatings to Improve Germination in Saline Soils
Rishant Pinnama Reddy
OCWD Young Water Innovator Award
Orange County Water District
The Most Polluted Tributary of the San Diego Creek
Shannon Ge
Naval Science Award
Department of Navy - Office of Naval Research
Toilet Paper: The Assassins of the Sewage
Mishti Vijay
OCWD Young Water Innovator Award
Orange County Water District
Engineering a Desalination Device for Portable Water Purification
Tabitha Tio
Naval Science Award
Department of Navy - Office of Naval Research
Eco-Friendly or Traditional: Best Material for Sound Absorption
Zixin Zhao
ALDM Young Investigator In Health Science Award
Southern California Section of Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine
Banana Fibers: A Scaffold for Cell Adhesion
Grace Wang
Air Force Research Laboratory Award
United States Air Force
Sailing at the Speed of Sound (Well, Almost!)
Geeta Putlur
Association for Women Geoscientists Award
Association for Women Geoscientists
Green Guardians Part II: Fungal Fighters & Rebel Biochar
Atharv Kakkar
OC San WateReuse Award for Excellence
Orange County Sanitation District
Evaluating Low-Cost Methods to Detect Microplastics
Natalie Jauregui Zenobio
OCWD Young Water Innovator Award
Orange County Water District
From Kitchen Scraps to Clean Water
Enya Pal
Environmental Stewardship & Conservation Award
Sea and Sage Audubon Society
Cohabitating with Coyotes in Suburban Neighborhoods
Daniel Zhai, Violet Bian, Jeremy Bian
Lemelson Early Inventor Prize
The Lemelson Foundation
Bike Safety and Surrounding Awareness Sensor
Siaansh Bhadauria
Citadel Securities Innovation Prize
Citadel Securities
Quantum Against Quantum: Using a Quantum Cryptographic System For Increased Database Security
Abhijith Sivaprakash, Shrey Mehta
Stockholm Junior Water Prize
California Water Environment Association
Smart Detection, Perfect Protection: Optimizing Natural Coagulants for Cost-Effective Microplastic Treatment
Abhijith Sivaprakash, Shrey Mehta
OCWD Young Water Innovator Award
Orange County Water District
Smart Detection, Perfect Protection: Optimizing Natural Coagulants for Cost-Effective Microplastic Treatment
Yejoon Choi
OCLB American Statistical Association Excellence Award - Finalist
American Statistical Association - Orange County/Long Beach Chapter
Quantitative Analysis of the Effect of a Remineralization Filter on Reverse Osmosis (RO) Filtered Water
Nishvith Sudhakar
OCLB American Statistical Association Excellence Award - Honorable Mention
American Statistical Association - Orange County/Long Beach Chapter
Quantitative Modeling of Glioblastoma Cell Density to Optimize Surgical Resection Margins
William Hong
Naval Science Award
Department of Navy - Office of Naval Research
Helmholtz Resonator Chains for Acoustic Bandgaps and Noise Mitigation
Parsa Jokar
White Coat Award, In Honor of President Crispina Chong-Han, MD
Orange County Medical Association
Evaluating Hyaluronidase as Therapeutic Enzyme for Myxomatous Degeneration using a Biocompatible Hydrogel Modeling Pathophysiology
Yejoon Choi
OCWD Young Water Innovator Award
Orange County Water District
Quantitative Analysis of the Effect of a Remineralization Filter on Reverse Osmosis (RO) Filtered Water
Haiyun Rui, Chen Zhou
Air Force Research Laboratory Award
United States Air Force
Evaluating the Structural and Degradative Properties of Polylactic Acid (PLA), Starch-Based, and Fiber-Reinforced Bioplastics for Medical Use
Bowen Wu
Citadel Securities Innovation Prize
Citadel Securities
A Contrastive Multi-View Self-Supervised Framework for Network Intrusion Detection with Finite-Difference Temporal Modeling (CMVS-FTM)
Ethan Van
NOAA Taking the Pulse of the Planet Award
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Microplastics transport in soil: Modeling bioturbation by earthworms
Bowen Wu
The Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation Chapman Award
The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
A Contrastive Multi-View Self-Supervised Framework for Network Intrusion Detection with Finite-Difference Temporal Modeling (CMVS-FTM)
Sharon Shen, Enaya Qadir
Energy is Everything Award - 1st place
The Energy Coalition
BioGlow
Driti Rajkumar
U.S. Metric Association Award
U.S. Metric Association
Breaking the Bacterial Barrier: Enhanced Targeted Therapy on the Lipopolysaccharide of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Using a Phage-Antibiotic Cocktail
Ivana Poon
OCLB American Statistical Association Excellence Award - 1st place
American Statistical Association - Orange County/Long Beach Chapter
Response of tardigrades to reactive oxidative species (ROS) perturbation in the presence of exogenous antioxidants
Daniel Nam
Ron Orta Excellence in Biomedical Research Award
California Society for Biomedical Research
Effects of Beta Cell Specific Smc3 Loss on Islet Cell Identity and Inflammation
Avery Hexun
NASA Earth System Science Award
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
Conditional Controls on Kelvin-Wave-Driven Initiation of Historical El Nino Events
Shreyan Chatterjee
ADLM Young Investigator In Health Science Award
Southern California Section of Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine
Novel Mechanistic Risk Mapping of California wild-fire pollutants-induced endothelial dysfunction linked Cardiac Arrhythmia
Kian Wu
ADLM Young Investigator In Health Science Award
Southern California Section of Association for Diagnostics and Laboratory Medicine
Skin Cancer Detection Using Machine Learning
Annika Chatterjee
The Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation Chapman Award
The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
Engineered Endogenous Exosome-Packed Phenyl Boronate, a biochemical redox scavenger as an effective sensitizer for immunotherapy in Cervical Carcinogenesis
Annika Chatterjee
YSEA Science Fair Award
Yale Science and Engineering Association
Engineered Endogenous Exosome-Packed Phenyl Boronate, a biochemical redox scavenger as an effective sensitizer for immunotherapy in Cervical Carcinogenesis
Xiaoru Guo
YSEA Science Fair Award
Yale Science and Engineering Association
Tuna-like Carangiform Robotic Fish
Jiexi Rao
AIAA Excellence in Aeronautics & Astronautics Award - 2nd place
American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics - Orange County
Airfoil Shape Study on High Performance Glider Flight — An online airfoil design kit and and airfoil optimization
Jiexi Rao
Air Force Research Laboratory Award
United States Air Force
Airfoil Shape Study on High Performance Glider Flight — An online airfoil design kit and and airfoil optimization