Four students from Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) have been named among Thermo Fisher Scientific’s top junior innovators, making IUSD the district with the most students recognized in Orange County. The competition, organized by the Society for Science and sponsored by Thermo Fisher Scientific, highlights outstanding middle school students across the nation who are working on innovative solutions to real-world problems.
This year’s IUSD Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators and their projects include:
| Mikhail Buskin Seventh grade, South Lake Middle School “Enhanced PAT FPV Inspection System: Cost-Efficient Arduino-Based FPV Pan and Tilt Camera System Controlled With Head Motion Tracking” |
| Isabel Chu Sixth grade, Santiago Hills Elementary School “AI Micromobility Detector” |
| Amy Fan Sixth grade, Santiago Hills Elementary School “AI Micromobility Detector” |
| Audrey Kim Eighth grade, Sierra Vista Middle School “Waste2Volt+: Enhancing a Piezoelectric Soccer Field With a Bio-Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Generator From Food Waste for TumbleAlert, an Innovative Wearable Fall/Drop Monitoring and SMS Alerts” |
Audrey Kim from Sierra Vista Middle School received this recognition for the second consecutive year.
This year, 300 projects were chosen from nearly 2,000 entries submitted by young scientists nationwide, with nine students from Orange County earning a spot on the prestigious list. To qualify for this competition, these students first had to excel at the IUSD Science Fair, advance to the County Science Fair and ultimately make their way to the national stage.
The top scholars, representing 48 states as well as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, tackled a wide range of issues. Their projects addressed critical topics such as air quality prediction, cardiovascular disease treatment, anxiety management and artificial intelligence (AI) for diagnosing breast cancer.
Each recognized student will receive a $125 award from DoD STEM, an initiative supporting the Department of Defense’s goal to cultivate a diverse and skilled STEM workforce. Additionally, the winners will receive a prize package, including a one-year subscription to Wolfram Mathematica software, courtesy of Wolfram Research.
Congratulations to our students on their amazing achievements!
Learn more about the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.