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Nashua students successfully compete in state Science and Engineering expo

By Grace Pecci - Staff Writer | Mar 28, 2019

NASHUA – A total of 18 Nashua High School North and South students successfully competed in the New Hampshire Science and Engineering Exposition last week.

The competition featured 12 Nashua High School North Biotechnology 2 students, one Biotechnology 1 student, and five Nashua High School South Science Research Club students. They had the chance to present research on a vast majority of science topics.

The competition took place on March 21 at New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord.

“The diversity of the student projects and their depth of knowledge about their topics was truly outstanding,” Nashua High School North Biotechnology instructor Divya Nagri said.

The event intends to challenge students and give them an opportunity to engage in hands-on science, engineering and math projects. In addition, the New Hampshire Science and Engineering Exposition Association states on its website that a goal is to attract students to the science, technology, engineering and math fields to meet the needs of the future.

There were three types of competition in which students could participate. First was the Open Competition, during which individual students, or teams of up to three students, have a question they are trying to answer. They design and conduct experiments with the attempt to answer their question.

Students who participate in this competition are expected to bring their data and other records pertaining to their experiment, featuring information on their work.

The categories in this division are: Behavioral Science, Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Computers, Earth & Space Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Mathematics, Physics and Electronics.

Students could also participate in the Challenge Competition. This requires students to solve a structured problem using scientific principles. All research and development on these topics must be done before the competition. On the day of the competition, students were expected to bring their materials and a poster. The topics for this division were: Balsa Bridge, Mousetrap Car Drag Racer and Yeast Growth Challenge.

There was also a STEAM Competition based on any Open or Challenge category.

Students were judged on their research projects and displays. Judges spent approximately 15-20 minutes viewing each presentation as displayed on the students’ poster boards. They also spent time discussing the students’ research. Judges assessed each project and calculated scores with an evaluation sheet.

By the end of the afternoon, decisions were made and awards distributed.

Seven Nashua High School North

biotechnology

students claimed awards

Kavya Phadke – Stockholm Junior Water Prize for “Is Your Bottled Water Safe?”

Anjali Shinde – NOAA Taking the Pulse of the Planet Award for “The Impact of Environmental Factors on Stem Cell Regeneration in Planaria.”

Shreya Nagri – Second place in the Behavioral Science category for “The Pursuit of Happiness” and an American Psychological Association Award.

Leandra Marchand – Office of Naval Research Naval Science Award for “Mighty Magnetosphere.”

Michelle Larivee – U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Award for “Hidden in Plain Sight.”

Mario Rodriguez – U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Award for “Popped! Testing the Effectiveness of Acne Medication.”

Aidan McGrath – Nominated to apply for the Regeneron Science Talent Search competition.

Three Nashua High School South Science Research Club students won

Timothy Yang – First place in the Behavioral Sciences category for “Machine Learning Logistic Regression and ROC Analysis in Making School Snow Day Decisions: Case Studies of New Hampshire and Massachusetts School Districts” and a $2,000 scholarship to the NHAS Summer Research Program.

Tejas Sathyamurthi – First place in Earth & Space Science for “A Novel Analytical Method to predict forest fires using machine learning.

Adyant Shankar – First place in Environmental Science for “Photo-Catalytic Oxidation Utilizing Doped Titanium Dioxide for Air Purification” and first place overall (Best in Fair).

Other Nashua

competitors

included

Philopater Askander – “Fun with Formulations.”

Arianna Braccio – “The Effects of UV Exposure on DNA-UV Sensitive Yeast.”

Aaron D’Mello – “Microbes on Mars: How we can potentially grow crops on Mars.”

Benjamin Fitzgerald – “Ecoshop of Horror.”

Adam Gosselin – “Terrific Transformation: Efficiency of Different Factors.”

Maggie Pare – “Dirty Lettuce: The Importance of Hand Washing in Food Service.”

Srinath Rangan & Sahil Mahendrakar – “Predicting the Properties and Occurrences of Forest Fires with Deep Learning Neural Networks.”

Grace Pecci may be contacted at 594-1243, or at gpecci@nashuatelegraph.com.

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