 So now that began our award ceremony, everybody has met me a couple of times today, probably, and I know that you've seen me. I want to go ahead and thank each one of you. I know that it is very difficult for some of you to be able to get here on a Saturday for your families to be able to support you. Students, I would like to congratulate each and every one of you for the work that you have done. The reason why it has taken so long to get the results because your projects were just amazing. They were wonderful and our judges took forever to be able to make up their minds as to who won what prize, which means anybody who didn't win a prize, you were really under consideration because they couldn't figure out who to give this to and who they couldn't give something to. So if you do not win an award today, please remember this is the state level. So y'all have done amazing work to get here already. So I want to congratulate every single one of you and let's make a round of applause for all the students. Now there are people who sit behind you students and who guide you and take you to places and do all kinds of things and a lot of those people in the room and these are your parents. So I would, students, you need to thank all of your parents who have brought you here or your friends or your relatives or your grandparents or whoever has made it possible for you to be here today and we are streaming this. I think we started our streaming. So if you are doing that connecting virtually, I want you to also turn around and thank your family for being able to support you. So students, thank those that supported you. There's another group. How many of you had a teacher who said let's do research projects this year? Okay. Do you have teachers or they said you're going to do a research project this year. Maybe it was that way. Okay. All right. I got more hands with that one. All right. So a lot of it is not understanding how excited you can get when you get asking your own question and figuring out the answers that nobody else has gotten before and it's all yours. And I hope you enjoy today talking with all the judges about your research project. So I hope you had a wonderful day and I hope I'm going to get to see a bunch of you again, whether it's next year or the year after or whatever. I've been doing this for 21 years, folks. So that's longer than any of you have been here. So anyway, so let's go ahead and let's do the drawings right now for the awards. And the first one that we're going to do is for the winners of the Thermo Fisher Scientific has given us a really cool water bottle. And this is for Anish Banerjee. And if you'll come up on this side. Okay. For the second award, we've got two of these. And I get the same subscription. It's really neat magazine. It's for the Science News, which is published by the Society for Science in the Public. And so I would like to announce who those people are. The first one is John Kirk. And the second one is Georgia Sadeed. And it's really a cool magazine. Congratulations. Congratulations. Okay. Now, how many of you turned down somebody handing you money? Any of you? Well, I guess it depends on what they're giving you money for. Maybe I should qualify for that. How about as an award? So we have gift cards in addition to the two students that have one gift card from us. The first is Bailey Heap. Or is it Happy Heap? Congratulations. And the second gift card goes to Ishar Sundaram. Well, thank you all for doing all of that great passport work. Did you learn something when you were going around through the dibbits? You did? Which one was your favorite? Summer Camp One. Was that at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics? Oh, okay. Summer Adventure, I think they call it. Summer Adventures or something like that. Okay. Any others? Come on, you can't tell me you didn't like making that slime. I had to make somebody make me some. Huh? It was good, wasn't it? Good job. Well, we're almost ready. We got quite a few of those. You ready? What are we doing? Getting ready for your awards? Yep. All right. Let's get down to it. So there are a couple things that I need to thank besides all your parents, teachers, and all of you. And I would like to thank we have some wonderful sponsors that have helped make this available. We don't get to use the facilities for free or anything else. So we would like to thank all of those that have helped us. And this year, Thermo Fisher Scientific has stepped in and has really become partners with us. And they have a special award that in addition to the one that we'll be talking more about later about nominations. So we have a group of those. You'll be hearing more about that in just a moment. So in behalf of our board, the Science and Engineering Fair Planning Committee, and all of our judges and volunteers and all of our regional directors, again, we want to congratulate every single student. Because remember, you were a regional winner to be able to get here at the state level. We had over 150 judges. I don't know if you started counting them when you were being judged. All of those are volunteers. We had about 125 other volunteers that came in to help make this all work. And our organization has one halftime employee, Mr. Fania Smith, and everyone else is a volunteer. So again, I would like to make sure you give a thank you to all of your teachers when you get back to school. So before I would like to quickly wear our platinum sponsors and gold sponsors, I think they're being displayed. And again, without their financial support, we would never be able to have this event. So I am going to now introduce our emcee for the junior division awards, which I know you're ready to get on with this. Dr. Alonso Alexander, and he is with the science house here at NC State University. Hello. You guys excited to hear about the awards, right? Yeah, you're like, get to the awards, old man. All right. Okay, before I can get to those, I do have some things I have to say, right? We've got housekeeping things that we have to do at events like this. I want to thank you all for being here. I want to thank those of you who are watching us on the live stream. Thank you so much. Just to reiterate, parents, thank you so much for the work that you do with your students to get them here. Teachers, mentors, it takes so many people to make you guys, right? Look amazing. It's you plus it's your entire support system. So we want to make sure that those people are recognized too. Judy Day, who you just heard from is our long serving volunteer director of the North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair. And her leadership, wow, we could not do it without you. Thank you so much, Judy. All right. Yes, give her a hand. We want to thank our regional directors. Of course, our executive director, Stefania Smith, who I was just shaking hands with. And again, thank you so much to the judges and volunteers. I would be remiss if I didn't also thank NC State because they pay my bills. Thank you so much, University, for that. Thank you, Chancellor Randy Woodson, Vice Chancellor Dr. Danika Scott, and of course, the division of academic and student affairs team for their support and making this event happen. Now, just before we get to the awards, I want to say one last time, remember, just by being in this room, you are winners. Give yourselves a hand for being winners, for being here right now. That's right. Okay. But but with that said, right, there, there, there are some like, you know, awards winners too. So we're going to jump right into them. We're going to get started. Great. All right. So did you hear that? I'm going to say it through the microphone. Please come up on this side of the stage, this side of the stage, and you will get your award. You'll shake all the hands or touch all the elbows, right? Don't lick anybody. And then you'll step out this way. And you see right over there, you'll go and you will take your picture with your award. Everybody got that? Okay, perfect. Good. So let's start with the special awards categories. The American Psychological Association Certificate of Award. This one goes to Megan Iguarte. Can magnetism speed up the regeneration in planarians? That's at Triangle Math and Science Academy. All right. All right. And of course, if you are a part of a group that is coming to present a special award and you hear me say that award, please come on up to the stage. Don't wait for me. Just come on up. There you go. All right. Next we have the Association of Women in Science. All right. This is the North Carolina Chapter Award. And it goes to Ella Hofford, Data Seeds from Asheville Catholic School. The Carolina Biological Award for Excellence. All right. All right. That goes to Eliza Veta, Emilia Nova, The Effect of Gravity on Plant Growth from Mills Park. Hold on. This is the Girl Scouts. We got the right one. Yeah, I think we got it. That is the next one. Oh, there are two of them. No. No, just so one. All right. So you have won the Girl Scouts award, which is the Girl Scouts award. So we do have that one, too. What? That's the Girl Scouts. Oh, so Chloe must be a virtual student. All right. So did we not end up with one certificate? No. Let me go ahead and, yes, let's see if she can take her photo. And then I'll announce the next one. All right. So Girl Scouts of North Carolina Coastal Pines, Creating a Better World. This is another of our special awards. And it goes to Chloe Pope, Blowing Up Some Power. Codes Irwin. All right. Then we have our DOD STEM Leadership Award. And that goes to Matthew Hagler. How Does Shape of Parachute Effect Fall Time? He's from Phoenix Academy. Our Lemelson Early Inventor Prize from the Lemelson Foundation goes to Eric Chin, Creating Reliable and Efficient Peer-to-Peer Networks for Sharing Computation. Eric's from Mills Park. Our NC One Water Award goes to Adarsh Lakshmanan, Testing Effectiveness of Biodegradable Biopolymers, A Low Cost and Green Solution for Storm Water Filter System from MetroLina. Our next NC One Water Award, Anish Banerjee, Ken Magnetic Force Reduce Heavy Metal Pollution in Water from Brawley Middle in Morrisville. And then our next NC One Water Award, Moksha Agrawal, Leftover Peel, Seal the Deal, Haines Middle in Winston-Salem. And those were our NC One Water Awards. All right. Now moving on to our NOAA Taking the Pulse of the Planet Award. It goes to Erica Hauser, Sunscreen Spray or Nay from St. Timothy's right here in Raleigh. All right. Our Advancing Equity through Innovation Award presented by Thermo Fisher Scientific. And we're going to have some special guests help us present this award. First, Shopee Gupta and Pihu Agrawal, Plant Power, A Clean Source of Renewable Energy. They're from Northwest Guilford Middle. Moksha Agrawal, Leftover Peel, Seal the Deal. And finally, Harshil Yaga. Can we predict risk of cardiovascular disease early on from medical records using machine learning from Community House Middle in Charlotte? Aditi Adhiga, Disease Identification using AI Breath Analysis from Mills Park Middle. And then Adam Mohamed and Mohamed Mohamed, Portable Potable, a SIN Leadership Academy. You got to wait for everybody. How do you stand in the back? Yeah, that's the best spot. Okay. All right. So you want me to get your picture made this way? First, together, give them a hand. That's right. Let's give them a hand. Good job. Good job. All right. Now we've got our United States, United States Air Force Award. Really? Thought he was here earlier? Oh, okay. Ella Hofford, Data Seeds from Asheville Catholic. Yeah, come on back up. And Zachary Hartzog does a Faraday cage effectively block electromagnetic waves from over hills middle. Give him a hand. That's right. And now our Office of Naval Research, Naval Science Award. And yes, we've got a special presenter here with us for this award as well. All right. First, Adarsh Lakshmanan. That's Testing Effectiveness of Biodegradable Biopolymers, a Low Cost and Green Solution for Storm Water Filter System. Georgio Sadi. How does water mismanagement affect pollution in residential areas from Mills Park? And Jaden Cho, Food Waste Hydrogels, Water Savers and Fertilizers. All right. Congratulations. All right. So now we're going to move into our divisions here. Here's, we're going to start with Biological Science A. Honorable Mention. Minakshi Nanduri and Sajcharan Karthikayan. Moisture Detecting Devices from Carnage Middle School. All right. Okay. Very good. All right. Third place, Zoe Tyn Brink, Magic Tulips from St. Mary Catholic School in Wilmington. This is Biological Science A. Second place, Shalyn Bear. Rooting for you, North Wilkes Middle. And first place in Biological Science A, Elizaveta Emilianova, the Effect of Gravity on Plant Growth from Mills Park. All right. Let's give Biological Science A a hand. Moving on to Biological Science B. Honorable Mention. Bailey Heap, Guilty as Charged, a Study of Energy Drinks from Table Rock Middle. Third place, Ishan Sundaram. Exploring Ways to Improve Prep Uptake and Equity for AIDS HIV Control in the U.S. from Randolph Middle and Charlotte. Second place, Shrinda Saro P.G. Forbidden Forever PFAS, A Cause for Heart Diseases from Haynes Middle. And first place in Biological Science B, Jamie Ching, Gum Shield, a Hydrogel Spray to Treat Gum Disease. She's from Mills Park Middle. And let's give all of Biological Science B a round of applause. Now we're going to move into Chemistry. Honorable Mention. Caleb Sorrell, Fabric, Friend or Foe. Millennium Charter Academy up in Mount Airy. Third place, Laszlo Gazano Stern. Why does the ice cream in a baked Alaska not melt when put into the oven? That's a good question. Asheville Catholic. Second place, Rowan Baker. The paper is mightier than the sword. Haynes Middle, Winston Salem. And first place in Chemistry, Kyle Kinlaw. Effective Light Color on Algae Photosynthesis. Kyle's from Greensboro Academy. And let's give all of Chemistry a round of applause. Moving to Earth and Environmental Science. Honorable Mention, Juliet Johnson. The Disappearing Plate, MCS Noble Middle. Third place, Shubhi Gupta and Pihu Agarwal. A Clean Source of Renewable Electrical Energy. Second place, Somya Wah. Three Little Pigs on Mars from Davis Drive Middle. And first place in Earth and Environmental Science. Jaden Cho, Food Waste Hydro Gels. And let's give everyone in Earth and Environmental Science another round of applause. Now for Engineering. Honorable Mention, Namita Chaudhry. Candy Vending Machine. Third place, Bode Blum and Ian Wolston. Five Axis Fuse Deposition Modeling Printer. Plus Computer Code from Northwoods Park Middle. Second place, Samantha Frank. Rain, Rain, Come Our Way from Stanley Middle. And first place, Adit Krishna. Who are I-Fi? Crisp Cool Air in Hot, Humid Places. Weddington Middle. All right, and those were our winners in Engineering. Mathematics, Statistics, Data Science. Honorable Mention. Vinith Chala, Shashank Sakharay, Atharva Konkala, Predicting the Future of Your Baby. Jayan Fry's Magnet School Out and Conquered. Third place, Rishi Janakaraman. Spotting Fake News and Application of Artificial Intelligence in Sarcasm Detection. That's Stanford Online. Second place, Rebecca Hoops Trunks and Tops. Estimating the Relationship Between Tree Height and Circumference in Pina's Taida. Pollard Middle in Chapel Hill. And first place in Mathematics, Statistics and Data Science. Ella Hoffert, Data Seeds. You getting tired of walking up here, Ella? Come on. All right, let's give them another round of applause. Moving into the category, near and dear to my heart, Physics. Honorable Mention. Samadarshi Ghosh, Wireless Power Transfer from Lakeshore Middle. Third place, Finnegan Davis. Swimming Stroke Preference versus Energy Exertion. Mantio Middle. Second place, Hamza Patan. Detecting Background Radiation through a Cloud Chamber. From Alamon School in Raleigh. And first place, Luca Garrido. Windmills, Windmills, Windmills. Haynes Middle, out in Winston-Salem. You gotta turn that state around too. There you go. All right, let's give the Physics awardees another round of applause. Now it's time for technology. Honorable Mention. Eric Chin, Creating Reliable and Efficient Peer-to-Peer Networks for Sharing Computation. Eric's from Mills Park Middle in Cary. Third place, Chloe Pope. Blowing up some power. Coats Irwin Middle in Dunn. Second place, Andreas Holmes. Human versus AI Art. Can you tell who's the real master? From Mills Park Middle. And first place, Brian Hay. Low-cost Unlocked Door Alarm Device. And let's give all our technology winners a round of applause. All right, now Ms. Judy Day is going to come switch in for the next set of awards. I'd like to invite some people. The rest of you want to come up? Okay. All right, so last year and in previous years, you may have heard that the top middle school award for students is the Broadcom Masters. And last year, North Carolina was very fortunate we had three middle school students that were selected amongst the thousands that were nominated and completed the package, narrowed down to 300. And then we had three of the 30 from North Carolina that were chosen as finalists and spent a week in Washington, D.C. Thermo Fisher Scientific has now taken over that award and is adding their own spin to it. So we have, I would like to introduce an old friend to come and tell you a little bit more about the new Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. Thank you, Judy. Hi, I'm Scott Billman, the Vice President of Global Engineering for Thermo Fisher Scientific, also a Passboard Member here for the Science Fair. So thank you all for attending. On behalf of Thermo Fisher Scientific, I'm thrilled to support and celebrate this incredible group of students. And if the talent and passion we saw today at the exhibits is any indication, I think our future is in great hands. As a world leader in science, Thermo Fisher Scientific is committed to making STEM education more accessible and more equitable for students here in North Carolina and across the world. Our goal is to nurture STEM in a workforce that more fully reflects the diversity in our society and solves the world's most complex problems for all of society. I'm especially excited to share that Thermo Fisher has a unique connection to this fair. Beyond all the great colleagues you saw wearing these red shirts today, we had about 25 volunteers here today. We're also the new title sponsor, as Judy mentioned, for the national middle school competition hosted by Society for Science. That draws from this fair and about 300 other fairs across the country. You remember it as Broadcom Masters, but now this year it's the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. So today's winners of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge award, by winning this award you're nominated to apply for the national competition. Society for Science will select 300 of those nominees and then they will get it down to 30 finalists who will win an all-expense paid trip to Washington DC where you can compete in team projects and go for more than $100,000 in prizes and first place will win $25,000 at that competition. So the more nominees that apply, the better chances are that we get representation and as Judy said, we have a good history of people winning awards at that event. Also, the more of you that apply, the more we will have a diverse perspectives at that event and hopefully make a difference in the world with your work. So thank you very much and I'll turn it over. Congratulations to all of these nominees on behalf of Thermo Fisher Scientific and good luck in the Junior Innovator Challenge. You left me the fun job. I did. All right, I got to move this back down because, you know, I'm not nine feet tall. Okay, first, Shailen Bear rooting for you, North Wilkes Middle, Alisa Veta, Emilianova, the effect of gravity on plant growth and Shrinda Sorrow, forbidden forever PFAS, a cause for heart diseases. Jamie Ching, Gumshield, a hydro spray to treat gum disease. Rowan Baker, the paper is mightier than the sword. Kyle Kinlaw, effect of light color on algae photosynthesis. Sam Yawag, three little pigs on Mars. Jaden Cho, food waste hydro gels, water savers and fertilizers. Samantha Frank, rain, rain, come our way. Adit Krishna, hurray, crisp cool air in hot humid places. Rebecca Hoops, trunks and tops, estimating the relationship between tree height and circumference in Pineas, Taita. And Ella Hoffert, data seeds. Luca Garrido, windmills, windmills, windmills. Eric Chin, creating reliable and efficient peer-to-peer networks for sharing computation. And Andreas Holmes, human versus AI art, can you tell who's the real master? And then finally, Brian Hay, low cost unlocked door alarm device. All right. Thank you all so much for coming today and for participating. Students, congratulations to all of you. Give the students another round of applause. You all are amazing. We know that you're going to continue your research, continue working in STEM. We hope to see you back at the North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair again. We'll have a link on the website for your photos, so stay on the lookout for that. Safe travel, everyone. Safe travel. And we'll see you at the 36th annual North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair, March 23rd and 24th of 2024. Have a good evening.