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2004's Science Talent Search Winners Are In

Posted by timothy on from the smart-cookies-solving-problems dept.

Slate is running an article about this year's Science Talent Search (concentrating on things like whether the participants are "weirdos"); there are better descriptions of the top entrants' projects at this results page. Congratulations to the winners!

14 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Beware my fate! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I won my senior year in high school and now all I do is post on /.

    1. Re:Beware my fate! by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 4, Funny

      I feel for you, brother! When I was in kindergarden, I invented and patented the magneto-ionic shaving rotisserie. Not only do you get closer shaves, your chicken is moist and tender. But that's not all. In grade school I experimented with human pheromone technology, but I had to move on to other research after my English teacher got pregnant. In high school, I invented a graphic user interface and windowing system for PCs, though my research notes mysteriously disappeared. My good pal Bill Gates helped me search for them but then had to go off to college at Harvard. Out of high school, I decided to take a year off before moving on to university. In my first job, at Tasty Freeze, I invented the banana split. I am now fabulously wealthy and do not need Science Talent Searches. But I have advice for all you youngers and future winners reading Slashdot. And that advice is: Get a Life.

  2. hmmm. by LBArrettAnderson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder how many of them had help from their parents...

    1. Re:hmmm. by cklin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was a finalist in the Westinghouse STS in 1995. The only help I got from my parents was their encouragement because they sure as hell didn't understand the work I was doing.

      Some people have an advantage due to their parents, but some do it on their own. It'd be kinder to give them the benefit of the doubt.

    2. Re:hmmm. by umofomia · · Score: 4, Informative
      I was a STS finalist back in 98 (back when it was still Westinghouse and not Intel) and can say with confidence that anyone who gets to that stage did not get help from their parents. The application and judging process is extremely rigorous.

      Once you're a finalist, in order to determine whether you should be in the top 10, they take you through a somewhat intimidating interview process, where you sit speak in front of 3 other scientists at a time (I don't remember anymore, but I think I had 3 or 4 of these types of interviews)... and they don't even ask you about your project. They basically grill you on basic science concepts to see if you know what you are talking about.

      BTW, to explain the high New York finalist ratio, this is due to the fact that a lot of New York high schools have 2-3 year programs especially designed to get students to do this competition. They never directly help your with your particular research project, but they do encourage you to go out to local universities and talk to professors in fields that you are interested in. They also help you enter other smaller science competitions in order for you to get more experience. If it hadn't been for one of these programs in my high school, I don't think I would have had the motivation/courage to do this on my own.

      Many of the finalists do come from magnet schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, but plenty of NY public schools have this program too. It's basically a way for them to get prestige. I don't know why other states don't do the same, though I guess money is always an issue.

    3. Re:hmmm. by dfung · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I volunteered as a judge a couple of years ago when the Intel STS had their finals in San Jose. As you interview all the candidates, you can definitely see that some of the students are coached in the area of expertise of a parent, some are directed by university staff that they study under, and some of these guys are just so smart that it's absolutely scary.

      In that first category, there was an interesting coincidence that I knew and had indirectly worked with the father of one of the students. His project was related to image compression technology which is what his father did. He was conversant in the area, but you really got the feeling that his research had been very closely directed by his father.

      You don't see the second type so much in computer science, but in areas like biology, you find that many of the students are working in college labs assisting researchers. This is about the only way that a high school student can study things like protein synthesis or recombinant DNA techniques - no high school would have the equipment or expertise. I guess nobody told them that they were too young to be working on their Ph.D, and that's good.

      One of the outstanding projects in our year was a kid whose project had to do with modelling the chemical processes that are involved in doping semiconductors in fab. One of the other judges who had specific experience in this area was blown away by his work, and it was clear to everybody that interviewed him that he loved the topic, loved researching it, loved constructing the experiment, and clearly had gotten no help from anyone. He got high marks from all the judges (must have been about 80 judges in Computer Science alone, all professionals or college-level professors, no high-school teachers), but ultimately didn't advance because it was clear that his project was miscatagorized into computer science because it was a simulation when it probably should have been in Chemical Engineering or some sort of Materials Science.

      If you ever get a chance to participate as a judge, or better yet as a mentor/sponsor, do it!

      Also, just a note - this contest is sponsored by Intel now, but is the same contest that Westinghouse sponsored for many years.

  3. dammit. by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now i feel old AND stupid. Thanks a lot you insensitive clod!

  4. Say what? by Caedar · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Like any company eager to burnish its brand, Intel had produced a brochure with the finalists' bios and a description of their projects--from Boris Alexeev of Athens, Ga. ("Minimal Deterministic Finite Automata--DFAs--for Testing Divisibility"), to Ning Zhou of Plymouth, Minn. ("Quantitative Trait Loci Modulating Corpus Callosum Size in the Mouse Brain")." Did they supply a dictionary with that brochure, as well?

  5. Talent Search, Eh? ]] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny


    Oh, that is bloody fucking terrible. This is the worst -- you are the worst scientist I have ever seen. Listen, do the world a favor and keep this... this thing away from us all. Kill yourself. Move far, far away and just hurl yourself off a cliff. Your parents ought to be ashamed of having you. Just... just take this 'cure for cancer' and get the hell out of my studio!

    Now, where's the hot scientists?
    </British Accent>

  6. Ugly photos by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Funny
    The photos of those kids are ugly. Not because the kids are ugly... but whoever ran their pictures through whatever JPEG compressor they used obviously knows as much about photo manipulation as I do about brain surgery.

    That said, looks like some rather spiffy stuff there.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  7. Insulting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Slate article is insulting. There is no other way to put it. The starting assumption that these kids would be so-called weirdos is silly, though perhaps unfounded. The stated "corollary" that "The more homegrown a young researcher, the more humdrum (by Intel standards) his or her enterprise--and the more exotic the kids' names, the more esoteric their topics" and the associated analysis of project titles is equally silly. Intel project titles are shaped by the conflicting influences of showing scientific merit (thus specific, and probably incomprehensible for people outside of the field of research, titles) versus appealing to a lay audience (such as the author of this article?).

    The author later implies that these kids "may get short shrift from their popular peers" -- the standard "nerd" with no social skills stereotype. While, without a doubt, some of these kids fall into that mold, it is far from true for some, and in fact most, of them.

    Lastly, the conclusion, in addition to perhaps being at odds with the earlier analysis of names, states that "the premium this year ... was on American ingenuity -- useful applications rather than elegant speculations." The story about the first prize winner's project, if anything, could perhaps reflect some politics in Intel's judging. The listed applications for the other projects are just that -- applications. When you do a theoretical project, you're forced into a position of "selling it." People will come up to you and ask you why what you did matters, and for the majority of them it will not suffice to extoll the value of intellectual development for its own sake. Very few STS finalists would be willing to say "this was just interesting theoretical work, with no immediate applications" (even if that is the complete truth). Am I devaluing their work? Absolutely not! I'm currently working on my mathematics degree, and I'm very much leaning towards pure math -- the more theoretical the better. If anything, I'd like to point out the viewpoint that "useful applications" are important is very dangerous. You can't always be looking at the short term, or significant advances won't happen.

    Overall, the Slate article displays a certain viewpoint and tint that I find very distasteful (just look at the cartoon they chose to have accompany the article!).
    With that, I'd like to congratulate the current crop of finalists. I hope they enjoy their time in the limelight, so to speak. It should be truly a wonderful experience. I personally know several of them and know that they most definitely deserve it.

    Truth-in-commenting Addendum: I say the above as a former STS Top 10 awardee, so I'm not entirely impartial here ;)

  8. I wish... by Lakedemon · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... that somebody would give me between 20.000 and 100.000 $ for each theorem I proved. These kids are lucky...

  9. MSN article surely isn't the best... by ericandrade · · Score: 4, Informative
    Top of the Top 40: Search tool for a cancer cure places first in national science competition is a better, shorter, take on the same event. There are probably many others.

    Why the MSN article gets choosed for /., with it's lame analysis of subject titles and physical attributes of the contestants, is beyond me.

  10. Dumbstruck by Sean+Clifford · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The AC who posted about the Slate article being insulting was right on the money. Obviously, they sent the wrong reporter to cover this story. Someone with a science background would have been able to say something meaningful about the Science Talent Search. I got far more from the synopsis than the Slate article.

    I have to say, the work these young students have done is nothing short of amazing. Herbert Hedberg's work on analyzing telomerase inhibitors resulted in a tool that can run the analysis in 10 minutes compared to the standard method which takes 2 days. Imagine the potential impact that can have on the treatment of cancer patients, like his grandmother.

    Boris Alexeev's work may yield this guy a visit from the NSA. With minimization of deterministic finite automata you have - as the article points out - a tool to reduce the memory and processing requirements of certain kinds of operations such as speech and optical character recognition - however, the article failed to point out another obvious application - signal processing with tons of applications in video and audio surveillance/recognition.

    Ryna Karnik's work applies directly to processor manufacturing - using a focused ion beam instead of photolithorgraphy to etch wafers. I read about a similar technique, but using electron beams in a sub-.03 micron process.

    Anyway, I was dumbstruck that these teenagers have produced such groundbreaking, original research. With encouragement and a suitable academic environment, teens can blossom - not just the gifted ones - and do amazing work that belies the stereotyping surrounding their age.

    As gifted teens, I remember how few adults took me and my friends seriously, much less listen to our ideas. As a society, American really needs to invest more money, time, and expertise in our educational system to ensure that more of our youth can have futures as bright as these student-researchers.