Hollis students Steven Szczeszynski, Peter Szczeszynski and Ian Coolidge attended the fifth annual White House Science Fair in Washington, D.C., as “honored guests” on Monday, March 23.

The fair features award-winning science projects from various competitions around the country.

President Barack Obama spoke at the event and posed with the students. Also in attendance were celebrated science educator and advocate Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” as well as renowned astrophysicist and science commentator Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Steven and Peter Szczeszynski are students at Hollis Brookline Middle School, in the eighth and seventh grades, respectively; Coolidge is an eighth-grader at the Academy for Science and Design in Nashua.

Last year, the boys participated in the Christopher Columbus Awards Competition, a program that invited middle school students to solve a community problem of their choosing using science and technology.

They presented a solution to the winter problem of water pipes in buildings freezing and potentially bursting. The team created prototype of an inexpensive system that would automatically drain a building’s water pipes in the event that dangerously cold temperatures were sensed.

The project won a gold medal at the Christopher Columbus Foundation finalist week in Florida last June, which resulted in the invitation to participate in the White House Science Fair.