Georgia Impact Science & Technology Society & Culture

UGA-sponsored science fair sends winners to international competition

Science Fair Animesh Koratana-h
Animesh Koratana

Athens, Ga. – Thirty-seven participants in the Georgia Science and Engineering Fair will move on to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, including Pinnacle Award winner Animesh Koratana of Northview High School.

Koratana’s project, Deriving Unsupervised Fluid Intelligence from Unstructured Data, was already selected for an invitation to ISEF at the Fulton County Regional Fair earlier this year. Five others earned all-expense-paid trips to the international competition at GSEF, which was held at the Classic Center and coordinated by the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, a unit of Public Service and Outreach.

That included the four winners of the Green Power EMC Intel ISEF Award, which provides a trip to Phoenix and the opportunity to compete there. Marietta High School’s Zoe Crisp (Recycling Aluminum in Resource Scarce Regions), Milton High School’s Agni Kumar (Canonical Representatives for Divisor Classes on Complete Graphs), Chattahoochee High School’s Eric Wang (Nutrient Starvation-Induced Cancer Cell Death in Leukemia Cells) and the Gwinnett School of Math, Science and Technology’s Jeffrey Yang (GBP Actuators for Optical Activation of Enzymatic Cascades) earned those awards.

Union Grove High School’s Marissa McDonald captured the Merial Intel ISEF Observer Award, which gives her the opportunity to attend the Intel ISEF Fair and observe, for her project, Galectin-3 and the Innate Immunity against Molecular Mimicry.

These winners were selected from a field of nearly 800 that advanced to the statewide fair through regional competitions. The GSEF is presented by Green Power EMC, a nonprofit corporation that buys and markets electricity from green Georgia sources and generates awareness about environmental products and services. The fair’s other major sponsor is Burns & McDonnell, a full-service engineering, architecture, construction, environmental and consulting solutions firm with a commitment to STEM education and outreach.