2024 Awards

2024 North Museum Science and Engineering Fair (NMSEF) Awards 

NMSEF Website

Warwick Awards (22)

Grand Champion: Rya McKain

Chemistry, Materials Science, Environmental & Engineering Technology

"Not Mush-Room for Plastic: the Effect of Substrate Types on Plastic Degradation in Mushrooms"

Reserve Champion: Rachel Behringer

Biomedical, Health, Microbiology

"My Bubbles!: Studying the effects of frozen and freeze-dried microbubbles used for drug delivery"

Biomedical, Health, Microbiology

• 1st Place: Hannah Rigg, "Sweet Science: The Effect of Sweeteners on Lactobacillus Levels in the Gut Microbiome"

• 2nd Place: Hayden Eby, "Life Savers! The Effect of Oil-Incorporated Films on Microbial Growth"

Chemistry, Materials Science, Environmental & Engineering Technology

• 1st Place: Jenna Jones, "The Effects of an Orange Peel SAP on Soil Moisture"

• 2nd Place: Lizzy Matthews, "The effect of pH sensitive vegetables on the detection of milk spoilage"

Earth & Environmental Sciences

• 1st Place: Emily Stauffer, "Nitrate Mitigation Through the Usage of Aquatic Plants"

• 2nd Place: Josie Lynch, "How Much Time Does it Take Magnetic Biochar to be Prime?"

• 3rd Place: Lyla Brenner, "Fluorescent Tagging of Polymer Particles with PBN for the Detection in Environmental Samples"

• Honorable Mention: Sarah Trovinger, "The Effect of Different Microbiomes on Latent and Sensible Heat Exchange and CO₂ Levels"

Energy, Physics, Astronomy

• 1st Place: Nicholas Rossi, "The Effects of the Turbine Type and Blade Amount on Wind Turbine Efficiency"

• 2nd Place: Aidan Lamson, "How Catalyst Concentration Affects A Fuel Cell"

• 3rd Place: Zachary Hoffman, "What's so fire about Joule heating? the examination of Joule heating in resistors"

• Honorable Mention: Cian Smith, "Hot Topic: The Heat Content of Different Types of Wood Using a Bomb Calorimeter"

• Honorable Mention: Eddy Cordero, "KFC: Kinetics for Coasters; The effect of kinetic energy on the safety of roller coasters"

Special Awards

• Punniest/Most Creative Title Award: Rya McKain, "Not Mush-Room for Plastic: the Effect of Substrate Types on Plastic Degradation in Mushrooms"

• The People’s Choice Award for the most popular project at the Community Science Showcase: Emily Stauffer, "Nitrate Mitigation Through the Usage of Aquatic Plants"

• Full STEAM Ahead II Precursor Award for the student with the best second-year project who did it for the love of science and not the college credit: Kaitlynn Himelright, "The Effects of Preservation on Agricultural Staples"

Judges

• A special thanks to all of our judges. The awards above would not been possible without your discerning minds and conversations. If you would like to be added to our list of judges for next year, please send Doug Balmer an email.

  • Brian Rice

  • Dr. Chris Runnels

  • Diann Trotman

  • Emma Urena*

  • Harry Cone

  • Landon Kurtz

  • Matthew Kofroth

  • Rick Balmer

  • Robert Ulrich

  • Sallie Gregory

  • Kaleb Best

  • Llana Clauss**

* Former science fair participant

**Former science fair student coordinator