14 Upper School students present at the 2025 North Central Regional Junior Science and Humanities Symposium

Fourteen Advanced Science Research (ASR) and Advanced Technology Projects (ATP) students traveled to Sioux Falls, South Dakota February 21-22, 2025 to compete in the North Central Regional Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) at Augustana University. Students were selected to move on to this competition after submitting a research paper from their fall semester projects in ASR or ATP. The students who submitted the top 24 papers from the North Central Region were invited to do a 10-minute presentation of their research to a panel of judges, where the top 5 of those presenters winning monetary prizes and a trip to present at and engage in the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in Virginia Beach, Virginia April 22-26, 2025. The next 40 students who submitted papers to the North Central JSHS were invited to present a digital poster at Augustana. The group was joined by ASR and ATP teachers Karissa Baker and Henri Parenteau. 

Shefali Meagher earned fourth place in the competition. This includes a fully-funded trip to the National JSHS Symposium in Chantilly, Virginia to present her research during the week of April 22-26, 2025. In addition, Deling Chen was named the first alternate and Huxley Westemeir was named as second alternate to present their research at the National JSHS Symposium.

Students that presented at JSHS, their grades and project titles:

Students who did a presentation of their research:

• Deling Chen '26: An Artificial Intelligence - Electrocardiogram Model for Prediction of Dementia – the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study
• Amanda Hsu '26: The effect of capsaicin on the heart rate of Daphnia magna under induced photoperiod stress
• Shefali Meagher '26: A Novel Analysis of Cosmetic Methylparaben in Artificial Amniotic Fluid
• Evan Morris '26: A Novel Approach to Enhancing Treatments for Neurodegenerative Diseases: Frequency-Dependent Optogenetics in C. elegans
• Huxley Westemeier '26: Integrity: Generalized Artificial Image Classification with Noise Doman Localization

Students who presented an electronic poster: 

• Andrew Evens '25: Improving Polyvinyl Alcohol as a Flame Retardant on Corrugated Cardboard Using Resveratrol and Tannic Acid
• Lam Le ‘26: Urban Ants and Heat Waves: A Test on T. immigrans
• Mariam Malik ‘25: The Effects of Polypropylene and Polyethylene on Dugesia tigrina Cell Regeneration
• Maren Overgaard ‘26: The Impact of Hypohydration on Concussion Severity
• Charlotte Talbot ‘26: The effect of 3-hydroxybutanone (acetoin) found in vapes/e-cigarettes on calcium mass
• Allan Wang ‘26: Understanding the effect of Calcium Chloride road salt on tires
• Inga Wing ‘25: Impact of PFAs Degradation on Fluorinated and Non-fluorinated Ski Waxes
• Annie Zhang ‘25: Sustainably Balancing Textile Consumerism Needs While Reducing Microplastic Shedding
• Arlo Zirps ‘25: Chemically Recycling CFRPs in Nitric Acid in Mild Conditions at Atmospheric Pressure