Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair Students Win 7 Awards at the 75th Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

SAN DIEGO, May 19, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The 75th Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world's largest and most prestigious science competition, concluded on May 16 with the Grand Awards ceremony in host city Columbus, Ohio. Over 30 million high school students from 1,600 affiliated fairs in 70 countries competed to qualify, of which only 1,700 students made it, including 10 from the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair (GSDSEF), led by GSDSEF Board Member, Treasurer and Judging Captain, Sany Zakharia. These finalists competed for $9m in awards, with the GSDSEF delegation winning a total of 7 awards, including 2nd place, 3rd place and two 4th places, for a total of $46,800.

Detailed results below:

Behavioral and Social Sciences
Hannah Im & Nupur Bhalla: Grade 11, Del Norte High School, "Optimizing Academic Burnout Mitigation: Statistical Modeling of Emotional Intelligence as a Protective Factor in Adolescents"
- ISEF Finalist

Biomedical and Health Sciences
Saanvi Dogra, Grade 11, Del Norte High School, "Uncovering Molecular Mechanisms for Treatment of Congenital Heart Defects through High-Content Genetic Perturbation Screens"
- Grand Award: Fourth Award of $600

Anirudh Kalyanaraman, Grade 12, Mt. Carmel High School, "A Novel Treatment Approach to Mitigate Adverse Cardiovascular Effects of Burn Pit Exposure"
- ISEF Finalist

Lilian Zeng, Grade 11, Del Norte High School, "Identifying Bacteriophages, Nature's Own Secret Weapon Against Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, for Achromobacter Treatment"
- ISEF Finalist

Biomedical Engineering
Kayley Xu, Grade 10, The Bishop's School, "Wearable Stethoscope Array for Cardiopulmonary Sound Localization and Interference Suppression Using Beamforming"
- Grand Award: Second Award of $2,400
- Special Award: Society for Science Alumni Award of $5k

Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Tarik Oguz, Grade 11, Del Norte High School, "Small Changes, Big Impact: miRNAs in Lung Cancer Detection"
- Grand Award: Fourth Award of $600

Physics and Astronomy
Joe Smith, Grade 12, Stanford Online High School, "Lost in the Stars: Chemical Tagging of the Magellanic Clouds and Accreted Populations"
- Grand Award: Third Award of $1,200

Plant Sciences
Anna Luo, Grade 11, Canyon Crest Academy, "Allelopathic Effects of Cynara cardunculus on Native Coastal Sage Scrub Species"
- Special Award: The New American University ISEF Scholarship of $32k

Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Ryan Rezaei, Grade 11, Canyon Crest Academy, "Symmetry-Preserving Variational Autoencoder and Latent Space Rectified Flow Diffusion for Accelerated Materials Discovery With Geometric Graph Neural Networks and Integrated Property Network Multi-Layer Perceptron"
- Special Award: Midjourney of $5K

Full results and project showcase available online.

About the GSDSEF

Since 1955, the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair (GSDSEF) has provided an inspiring experience in science and engineering for tens of thousands of San Diego and Imperial County students, motivating them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This regional competition challenges students to go beyond classroom studies to do independent research – to ask compelling questions, to design and implement innovative solutions, and to present and defend results to judges who are professionals in their fields. The GSDSEF brings together 800 of the best middle and high school students, 400+ judges who are professionals in their fields and over 60 professional societies and organizations, with $40k in prizes awarded.

The GSDSEF fosters creativity and innovation through inquiry, celebrates students' STEM achievements, and showcases how young minds can make an impact in the present and future. Many of these student scientists are conducting world-class research and conducting groundbreaking experiments in fields ranging from Astronomy to Zoology, such as the discovery of cures for diseases, formulations of new vaccines, cancer research, applying AI to enhance medical diagnoses, using biomimicry for water conservation, novel drone technology, advances in micro robotics and autonomous driving technology. The GSDSEF is the highest-level STEM competition in the region and one of the oldest, most respected and competitive in the world. The GSDSEF is a 501(c)(3) organization run entirely by unpaid volunteers. Learn more at gsdsef.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.               

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Media Contact:
Sany Zakharia
[email protected] 

SOURCE Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair