Twenty-six students from the Middle School and 16 students from the Upper School presented research projects at the PJAS (Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science) – Region 3 competition held at Northampton Community College on Saturday, February 23rd. Student presentation topics included math, computer science, engineering, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, microbiology, physics and behavioral science. 

Twenty-one Middle School students – six of whom received a perfect score – and 12 Upper School students received first awards. Five Middle School students and four Upper School students received second awards. 

Students who received first and perfect score awards will present their projects on May 19th – May 21st at the state level meeting at Penn State University, College Park.

Congratulations to all those who participated! The results of this year’s competition are a reflection of all the time, effort, and energy that our students put into their projects.

Perfect Score Award Recipients (score: 5.0)

• Nayva Manne ’24– “Which Seeds Can Survive in Cold Temperatures?”

• Pranavi Marella ’24 – “The Josephus Problem”

• Rayna Malhotra ’24 – “The Synergistic Effect of Natural Oils on Antibiotics”

• Gia Gupta ’23- “Corrosion of Metal”

• Okezue Bell ’23– “Health in IoT: Wearable Monitors”

• Rohan Mehta ’23– “VirtualVote: A Decentralized, Democratic Voting Application”

First Award Recipients (score: 4.0  to 4.9)

• Neil Deshmukh ’20 – “Device for Automatic Medical Diagnosis Using Deep Learning”

• Rhea Malhotra ’20 – “Using Optics for Cardiovascular Disease Diagnostics”

• Avi Singh ’20 – “An Investigation Into the Effects of Misophonia”

• Niket Surya ’21 – “The Spicy Life: Can the Bacteria Take the Heat?”

• Yiyi Chen ’22 – “Art Gallery Theorem”

• Lily Eyvazzadeh ’22 – “Using Oohos to Reduce Plastic Pollution”

• Mikail Jaffer ’22 – “Using TEG’s to Generate Electricity with an Integrated Graphene Circuit”

• Sophie Lee ’22 – “The Ant on a Rubber Rope”

• Samit Mohapatra ’22 – “Heavy Metal Removal from Wastewater by Activated Carbon”

• Eva Saramya ’22 – “The Effects of Water Impurities on Plants”

• Katie Shnier ’22 – “Pitch, Sound Waves, and Crystal Wine Glasses”

• Divik Verma ’22 – “Using Various Proofs to Show that .999…is Equal to 1”

• Wisdom Ufondu ’23 – “Turning Heat into Electricity Using the Seebeck Effect”

• Anjali Shankar ’23 – “Effect of Anticoagulants on Coagulation of Blood: Stimulation”

• Ben Edelman ’23 – “How Does Air Pressure Affect the Speed of A Soccer Ball?”

• Michael Alchaer ’23– “Pascal’s Triangle in Cell Division”

• Adrian Vanegas ’23– “Parallax”

• Rosemary John ’23– “Soil pH vs. Plant Growth”

• Yan Yu ’23– “Can Households Degrade Plastic?”

• Ryan Stubblefield ’23 – “The Effect of Corked Bat on a Baseball’s Distance”

• Kanchan Gupta ’24– “Music: Help or Distraction for Testing?”

• Krish Gupta ’24– “How Heat Affects the Movement of Water”

• Ryan Cheng ’24- “Mobile Sensing for Road Hazards”

• Anya Chadha ’24– “The Stroop Effect”

• Alizeh Ali ’24- “Moisturizers: What Types Actually Prevent Dryness in Skin?”

• Chessie Bartolacci ’24- “Number of Coils vs. Electromagnetic Strength”

• Sebastian Malaver ’24- “Gear Up for Speed”

Second Award Recipients (score: 3.0 to 3.9)

• Karilyn Kruklitis ’20 – “The Effect of Fruit Ripening on pH”

• Nader Rifai ’21 – “Chemistry of Developing Film”

• Kavin Sampath ’21 – “How Safe Are Electronic Cigarettes?”

• Vince Menichelli ’22 – “Structural Weight Distribution”

• Patrick Johnson ’23 – “Signal Processing Using Fourier Analysis”

• Nabeel Rifai ’23- “The Science of Fractal Geometry”

• Kaitlyn Lee ’23 – “The Effects of Propagating Succulents”

• Inaaya Chaudhry ’24– “How Does the Temperature Affect the Bounce of a Tennis Ball?”

• Aman Desai ’24– “Pascal’s Triangle”