Halton District School Board students walked off with a record number of awards at a recent Hamilton science fair.
Grade 8 and 11 students from area schools took home a staggering 147 prizes following the Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair (BASEF), which took place at Mohawk College in Hamilton on March 29 to April 2.
More than 450 science students took part in the 159th installment of the competition, which was sponsored by Arcelor-Mittal Dofasco. The prizes up for grabs were worth more than $300,000 in total. Within the HDSB alone, 15 schools competed, with students creating 160 projects. Six other school boards and independent schools also sent teams to compete.
One of the winners, Arielle Ainabe, was profiled two weeks ago in Oakville News’ coverage of a recent TEDx youth conference in town. The Garth Webb Secondary School student came in third place in the science fair for her project, ‘Tardigrade Mech: Using Boron Nitride Nanotubes for Space Radiation Protection’.
Sabrina Mogus, Grade 9 student at White Oaks Secondary School won the Best-In-Fair award for her project ‘Need some TLC? Tigernut Liquid Cagulant: An undiscovered biocoagulant for water turbidity reduction.’ Mogus is also the recipient of the Best High School Project award.
Coupled with their awards, both Mogus and Ainabe are among four high school students selected to compete mid-May in Phoenix, Ariz. at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
The Top Elementary School award was earned by W.H. Morden Post Secondary in Oakville.
Additionally, the following students made the cut in Hamilton and will take part in a Canada-wide science fair, taking place mid-May in Fredericton, New Brunswick:
- Jeffrey Klinck, Grade 8 student at W.H. Morden PS - ‘Using B.C.I. and A.I. for Emotion Detection for Mental Health Applications’
- Monica Mahut, Grade 11 student at M.M. Robinson HS - ‘Elevator to Everywhere’
- Evan Shvetsov, Grade 8 student at Maple Grove PS - ‘How Neurolinguistic Programming in Media Affects Consumers’
- Lily Smales, Grade 8 student at W.H. Morden PS - ‘Convolutional Neural Network to Detect Eyes with Early Stages of Visual Impairment’
- Mohammed Torkmani and Raphael Xu, Grade 8 students at Maple Grove PS - ‘Plastic Delicacies’
Other participating students also received prizes including scholarships, trips, special awards and even cash. For more information, check out basef.ca or click here for complete HDSB results.