As you are waking up on Saturday morning, we have some absolutely wonderful news to share with you from LA. At the ISEF 2024 Grand Awards, we have just won 5 Grand Awards. These Grand Awards are only for the best 25-27% of projects in each category. So a category with 80 projects will have something like 2 firsts, 4 seconds, 6 thirds and 8 fourths, while 60 projects miss out on an award. So a fair like ours with 9 projects will, on average, have 2 Grand Awards. Last year we had 3 Grand Awards, which was fantastic, but 5 Grand Awards is extraordinary!
Our Grand Award winners are:
- 2nd Place in the category of Translational Medicine – Aditya Ghai from Anglican Church Grammar School (Churchie), QLD
- 3rd Place in the category of Biomedical Engineering – Jeslyn Tan from Barker College, NSW
- 3rd Place in the category of Earth and Environmental Sciences – Pothik Vincent Mondol, Mohammad Niyaz Hasan and Monishi Rangchak Tripura from Darwin High School, NT
- 3rd Place in the category of Earth and Environmental Sciences – Adrian Zhuang and Alex Zhuang from The King’s School, NSW
- 4th Place in the category of Software Systems – Rahul Kumar from Brisbane Grammar School
With the two team awards we effectively had 8 out of our 12 finalists win Grand Awards – a very good day for STEM students from Australia. In Australia’s 25 years of ISEF representation we have never won more than four Grand Awards, so this is a record-breaking performance.
This is on the back of two Special Awards won last night:
- USD $800 – 2nd Place (not 3rd place as mentioned in my last email) in the INCOSE Systems Engineering Award – Jeslyn Tan from Barker College, NSW
- USD $500 – Prize winner in the Qatar Research, Development, and Innovation Award – Kevin Hao from Knox Grammar School, NSW.
On behalf of the 22-strong Australian delegation over here in Los Angeles, I would like to firstly thank our judges who wisely selected the top nine projects; our sponsors who made this trip possible; the Royal Society of Victoria who managed the plethora of funding transactions; the parents and teachers who supported each of the student finalists and most importantly the wonderful AUSSEF Committee who organised the whole selection process and the all-expenses-paid-trip to Los Angeles.
Our sights are now set on ISEF 2025 to be held in Columbus Ohio, so we would love sponsors to jump on board now to give their expressions of interest so we can better prepare for this event.