2004's Science Talent Search Winners Are In 128
Slate is running an article about this year's Science Talent Search (concentrating on things like whether the participants are "weirdos"); there are better descriptions of the top entrants' projects at this results page. Congratulations to the winners!
Re:hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people have an advantage due to their parents, but some do it on their own. It'd be kinder to give them the benefit of the doubt.
As impressive as this is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ugly photos (Score:4, Interesting)
I was a semifinalist (Score:1, Interesting)
I went to a couple of science fairs after I finished my project and before finding out that I was a semi. And the author is correct; I was basically a display at a museum. Press a button and I'll talk. Don't expect me to say something that I hadn't rehearsed dozens of times before though. And please don't ask me questions in the related fields because I simply won't know.
I wasn't a very good student in High School. I basically did a project as a last ditch to get into a good college. Unfortunately/fortunately most college admission boards were smart enough to see through this and I did not get into the most competitive schools. I did end up at an okay engineering school though. But the whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth and I changed my studies to other fields when I got to college.
Now that I am about to graduate, I look at my college record and it's a mirror of my high school record -- mediocre. Except now I don't have anything similar to get me into grad school. So now I'm looking for a job and can't really find one. There really is no substitute for solid grades and good extracurricular activities. They are far better indicators of performance in college -- and in life.
I'm not saying that there aren't brilliant people in the finalist or even semifinalist group, but take it from me, they have had a lot of help getting there. The winner this year seems like he is genuinely smart, since he got into all the colleges he applied for.
Re:I was a semifinalist (Score:3, Interesting)
This of course doesn't mean that there are no bright people at all, but if you get a look into these contests, you realize that these are still only humans.
Re:hmmm. (Score:5, Interesting)
In that first category, there was an interesting coincidence that I knew and had indirectly worked with the father of one of the students. His project was related to image compression technology which is what his father did. He was conversant in the area, but you really got the feeling that his research had been very closely directed by his father.
You don't see the second type so much in computer science, but in areas like biology, you find that many of the students are working in college labs assisting researchers. This is about the only way that a high school student can study things like protein synthesis or recombinant DNA techniques - no high school would have the equipment or expertise. I guess nobody told them that they were too young to be working on their Ph.D, and that's good.
One of the outstanding projects in our year was a kid whose project had to do with modelling the chemical processes that are involved in doping semiconductors in fab. One of the other judges who had specific experience in this area was blown away by his work, and it was clear to everybody that interviewed him that he loved the topic, loved researching it, loved constructing the experiment, and clearly had gotten no help from anyone. He got high marks from all the judges (must have been about 80 judges in Computer Science alone, all professionals or college-level professors, no high-school teachers), but ultimately didn't advance because it was clear that his project was miscatagorized into computer science because it was a simulation when it probably should have been in Chemical Engineering or some sort of Materials Science.
If you ever get a chance to participate as a judge, or better yet as a mentor/sponsor, do it!
Also, just a note - this contest is sponsored by Intel now, but is the same contest that Westinghouse sponsored for many years.
Re:Dumbstruck (Score:3, Interesting)
Boris Alexeev's work may yield this guy a visit from the NSA. With minimization of deterministic finite automata you have - as the article points out - a tool to reduce the memory and processing requirements of certain kinds of operations such as speech and optical character recognition - however, the article failed to point out another obvious application - signal processing with tons of applications in video and audio surveillance/recognition.
I do not see the connection here, his method is probably not applicable to stochastics processes.
In general it is not mentioned what he was exactly doing. Minimization of state machines and many directly releated topics (BDD SAT prover, formal verification etc) are a very active field of research so it is more than questionable he had a breakthrough idea.
Nonetheless, this is a very abtract topic and some new conjectures and proofs are certainly impressive.
Ryna Karnik's work applies directly to processor manufacturing - using a focused ion beam instead of photolithorgraphy to etch wafers. I read about a similar technique, but using electron beams in a sub-.03 micron process.
In fact FIB (focussed ion beam) was invented to manipulate nanosized structures. I am not aware of any transistor build by that and I see some problems there, but it is certainly not far off.
Please note that this is not a batch method and will not enable manufacturing of circuits. Also the resolution is not as good as can be achieved with other methods.
More impressive here is that she actually had access to a FIB machine. These cost millions to buy and tens of thousands to operate. I am only aware of few universities that have these available.
Re:"Native" US Kids? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was not in the Intel STS, but did attend the International Science and Engineering Fair a few years ago. People that have help from their parents tend to stand out when you actually talk to them about their project. I can't say every one of them gets weeded out, especially at the more local competitions. But by that level the judging is done pretty well. Some of them that won and had help from the parents might still actually know their stuff and still deserve something. It can't really be judged without talking to them in person.
The one thing the annoyed me early on was not the help from parents, but instead the help from universities. I grew up far from a major university and without a school science program like some of the other high schools have, so I didn't have access to a lot of the equipment some did (but they at least don't have the experience of setting the garage on fire). Some of these people seem to work completely in the shadow of a professor, although as with the help from the parents, most of them get weeded out if the student doesn't know what they are doing. At least my experience of using a very tight budget and common equipment has carried over into my research now and keeps my boss happy for not spending much.
The one thing the surprised me in the end though, was how amazingly noncompetitive the competition itself ended up. I know that all of the people from my area that were going got all psyched up beforehand and ready to kick butt. But once you get there, that all seems to fade away and instead you have a good time talking to all of the other students about their projects. The ones that get too much help on their projects tend to miss out on this part, since they may lack the interest and/or knowledge to keep up with all of the people. It would have been nice to win more money (financial aid has me covered anyways), but what I will remember most about it was all the students I met from all over the world and all the cool stuff every one did.
Re:hmmm. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a 17-year old who's taking graduate level math courses, and doing better than (probably) most of the grad students. I hear that he's going to Harvard next year-- can't wait to see how he does on the Putnam exam.