NJAS 2023

The NJ Academy of Science (NJAS) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve and promote the advancement of STEM-related fields among the NJ scientific community. NJAS is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and is a member of the National Association of Academies of Science (NAAS).

The goal of the academy is to stimulate education and research in STEM fields throughout New Jersey. As part of this mission, NJAS hosts an annual meeting at which high school students present their independent research to a panel of judges. From the projects submitted, 3 projects in each category are selected by the judges. Both the first and second place finishers are selected as delegates to represent New Jersey at the American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS) Annual Meeting in conjunction with the AAAS Annual Meeting.  Third place finishers serve as alternate delegates. The Monmouth County Vocational School District sends all first place delegates  to the annual meeting. 

The students below entered their research projects in the NJAS 68th Annual Meeting. First, second, and third place finishers are also indicated. 

11th Grade Participants

• Ishaan Akula - "Implementing an Offline Coordination System for Agricultural UAVs"

• Ayush Bobra - "Classifying White Blood Cells in Smear Images Using Deep Learning"

• Blake Cregg-Wedmore "Affordable Pulse Oximeter for Accurate Readings in Low Perfusion Individuals"

  • Category Award - Health & Medicine

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Health & Medicine

• Haley Deng - "Role of 5-HTP Mediated Serotonergic Activity on Operantly Conditioned Memory Retention in D. tigrina"

  • Category Award - Psychology/Animal Behavior

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Psychology/Animal Behavior

• Katherine Fang - "Discovering Habitable Exoplanets Using GPU Folding, Sigma-Clipping, and Deep Learning"

  • Category Award - Engineering/Physics

• Syona Gupta - "The Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Tap Water Microplastics"

• Animish Jain - "Applying Multiplicative Weights Update to Skin Cancer Classification Applications"

• Kevin Liu - "Speech Transcription of Huntington's Disease Patients Utilizing Deep Neural Networks"

  • Category Award - Computer Science/Mathematics

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Computer Science/Mathematics

• Nidhi Nair - "Genetically Modified E. coli for Accelerated Degradation of PET Microplastics"

  • Category Award - Environmental Science

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Environmental Science

• Nikhil Osuri - "Effect of Oldenlandia diffusa and Astragalus membranaceus on D. tigrina Regeneration"

• Sreeja Paruchuri - "Supplementing Antibiotics With Varying Sizes of Gold Nanoparticles on E. coli"

  • Category Award - Microbiology

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Microbiology

• Arjun Tschand - "Realtime Drowning Detection Using a Motorized Machine Learning Monitor System"

  • Category Award - Engineering/Physics

• Melina Varouhakis - "Effect of predator kairomones on Daphnia pulex"

  • Category Award - Marine Science

• Shravani Vedagiri - "Effects of Vitamin Supplements on the Impact of Blue Light Exposure on Glucose Metabolism in D. melanogaster"

  • Category Award - Health & Medicine

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Health & Medicine

• Advika Vuppala - "Detection of Anemia Through Image Threshold Processing of Palpebral Conjunctiva"

• Rebecca Wang - "Reduce E-commerce Fulfillment Waste and Environmental Impact by Optimizing Packaging"

  • Category Award - Computer Science/Mathematics

• Caitlyn Zito - "Shoelace Locking Device for Individuals with RA In Finger Joints"

  • Category Award - Engineering/Physics

    • Advances to represent HTHS as a delegate at 2024 AJAS Conference in category - Engineering/Physics

• Daniel Zlotnick - "A Comparison of Common Flooring Materials in Minimizing Head Injury Severity"