Eight Michigan Students Honored At ISEF Grand Award Event
16 May 2000
Eight Michigan Students Honored At ISEF Grand Award Event
DETROIT--May 12, 2000--Eight Michigan high school students were honored at the concluding Grand Award Ceremony for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) this afternoon at Cobo Area.The students and their schools are: Sara Marie Raser Palmer, 18, Addison High School, Addison; Melinda Mae Sloma, 17, and Seetharam Chowdary Chadalavada, 18, both from Battle Creek Area Math & Science Center, Battle Creek; Siddharth Bhaskar Shenai, 18, and Sameer S. Walavalkar, 17, both of Detroit Country Day School, Beverly Hills; Kaury T. Eisenman, 17, Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center, Kalamazoo; Todd Ryan Faner, 18, Grosse Pointe North High School, Grosse Pointe, and Regan Anna Marie Wilson, 17, Grosse Pointe South High School, Grosse Pointe Farms.
Palmer, of Somerset Center, received $500 and a fourth-place "Best in Category" award from Intel for an environmental science project, "Effects of Leaf Type, Site Selection and Leaf Pack Removal Time on Stream Invertebrates." The study used insects from a stream to determine water quality.
Chadalavada and Sloma , both of Battle Creek, shared $1,000 and a third-place Intel "Best in Category" award in medicine and health for their project, "Skeletal Muscle Cells -- Competent Model Systems for Neurotrophic Research: Two Year Study." Their research dealt with the chemical GDNF and understanding the physiology of it in skeletal muscle cells.
Shenai, who lives in Bloomfield Hills, received a third-place "Best in Category" award and $1,000 from Intel for an engineering project entitled "Sensitivity Nulling of Inertial Guidance Systems." His study demonstrated a method for correcting rocket flight paths.
Sameer Walavalkar lives in Beverly Hills and won $500 and a fourth-place "Best in Category" award in physics for a project entitled "A Crystal Growth Variation of the Bak-Sneppen Evolution Model." His work uses basic chaos theory to model things ranging from crystal growth to evolution.
Kaury Eisenman, a Kalamazoo resident, won $500 and a fourth-place "Best in Category" award in physics for her project, "Evolution of the Giant Dipole Resonance Width With Nuclear Temperature in 120 Sn." Her study examines nuclei jiggle and why everything in our world jiggles like Jello, even fingernails and eyelashes.
Faner, of Harper Woods, and Wilson, of Grosse Pointe Park, shared $500 and a fourth-place "Best in Category" award from Intel in earth and space sciences for their team project titled "Identifying Unknown Solar Absorption Lines." The study seeks to identify new solar elements.
The eight Michigan students are among 1,223 students from the United States and 42 other countries competing for scholarships, grants and awards at ISEF 2000.
More than 1,100 judges participated in this year's ISEF competition, including engineers, doctors, chemists and other scientists with doctoral degrees or at least six years of experience in their fields.
ISEF 2000 projects were entered in 14 categories: Behavioral and Social Sciences, Biochemistry, Botany, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth and Space Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Science, Gerontology, Mathematics, Medicine and Health, Microbiology, Physics and Zoology.
Intel Corporation is the international title sponsor of Intel ISEF, which is a Science Service program. Local Detroit-area hosts for ISEF 2000 include the Science and Engineering Fair of Metropolitan Detroit and the Engineering and Science Development Foundation's FutureLINK campaign.
Intel ISEF is held in a different city each May. Host cities enjoy the pride of hosting an international event and, in the process, generate close to $8 million for their local state economies. The Host City Committee is responsible for securing facilities, recruiting judges, promoting volunteerism, arranging tours and raising funds in support of the program. Local support for ISEF 2000 has been provided through the efforts of the Engineering and Science Development Foundation and major corporations, foundations and private donors throughout the State of Michigan.
Special awards sponsorship is open to scientific, mathematical and engineering societies; agencies of the Federal government; colleges and universities and corporations. Colleges and universities also provide tuition scholarships to Intel ISEF finalists.
For more information on ISEF 2000, visit www.isef2000.org or www.sciserv.org.