Intel Science Talent Search

This is the VOA Special English SCIENCE REPORT.

A teen-age boy from the state of Colorado has won the top prize in the Intel Science Talent Search. The competition is the oldest program in the United States that honors the science projects of high school students. The Intel Science Talent Search is sixty-one years old this year.

The winners receive a new computer and money for a college education. More than one-thousand-five-hundred students entered projects for the competition this year. The students came from thirty-one states, the District of Columbia and Guam. Forty-eight per cent were female. Fifty-two percent were male. Their research projects involved nearly every area of science, including chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, social science and medicine.

Forty students were invited to Washington D.C. for the final judging. Ten of the top winners were born outside the United States. Five were born in China. Two were born in India. The others were born in Estonia, Belarus and Israel. Well-known scientists judged them on their research abilities and creative thinking. They also questioned the students about scientific problems before deciding on the top ten winners.

The top winner was eighteen-year-old Ryan Patterson of Grand Junction, Colorado. He received one-hundred-thousand dollars for his college education. He invented a device that changes American Sign Language into written words on a small screen. The invention has won prizes in other science contests. Ryan says he wants to continue developing electronic devices that can improve peoples' lives.

The second place winner was seventeen-year-old Jacob Licht (pronounced likt) of West Hartford, Connecticut. He received seventy-five-thousand dollars for a mathematics project that studied the Rainbow Ramsey Theory. It involves the idea that order must exist within disorder.

The third place winner was seventeen-year-old Emily Riehl (pronounced reel) of Bloomington, Illinois. She received fifty-thousand dollars. Her mathematics project studied an algebraic structure called the Coxeter group.

Intel official Craig Barrett praised all the students as future scientific leaders. He said they will play an important part in curing diseases, protecting the environment and developing new computer technologies.

This VOA Special English SCIENCE REPORT was written by Nancy Steinbach.