14 Upper School students present at the 2024 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 23-24, 2024 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. This is the first year that Augustana University has hosted the North Central Regional JSHS. While the students were selected to present at this symposium based on a research paper, the requirements for this competition were to give a twelve-minute presentation, followed by three minutes of questions to a panel of three judges in a room with other finalists and audience members. These 14 SPA students (listed below) were among a total of 43 students selected to present their research at this symposium. The group was joined by ASR and ATP teachers Karissa Baker and Kate Lockwood along with Colton Werner.

Bora Mandic '25 earned first place in the competition and will travel to the National JSHS Symposium in Albuquerque, New Mexico to present his research during the week of May 1-4. In addition, David Schumacher '25 was named the second alternate to present his research at the National JSHS Symposium.

These researchers are now off to the next stop in the science research season: the Twin Cities Regional Science Fair on Friday, March 1 at the Minnesota State Fair Coliseum.

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

• Talia Cairns '25: Rhizofiltration of Nitrate and Phosphate by Elodea Canadensis Under Varying Temperatures
• Deling Chen '25: A Novel Electrocardiogram-Based Model for Prediction of Dementia—the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study
• Jacob Colton '25: Effect of Annealing Time on Electrodeposited Zinc Samples for Use in Dye Sensitized Solar Cells
• McKinley Garner '24: The Effectiveness of Aspergillus niger as a Remedy to Microplastic-Contaminated Soil
• Samantha Gilats '24: Exploring Potential Effects of Theobromine on Girardia tigrina Regeneration
• Humza Jameel '25: Investigating The Effects of Rubber Aggregate as a Substitute for Natural Aggregate on the Strength of Concrete
• Cerena Karmaliani '25: The Absorbency of Home-Compounded Transdermal Pain Medication in Comparison to Industrially Manufactured Voltaren Gel
• Rohan Kharbanda '25: The Effects of Varying Sizes of Polylactic Acid as a Supplement for Concrete Aggregate on the Maximum Stress and Young’s Modulus of Concrete
• Lam Le '26: The Solitary Bees' Diet: An Exploration of Megachile campanulae
• Rita Li '24: The Effect of Music Lyrics on Memory
• Bora Mandic '25: SignalGrab: A Machine Learning Approach to Helping Color Blind Drivers 
• Nicholas McCarthy '25: The Effect of Synthetic and Composted Manure Fertilizers on the Growth of Brassica juncea in Copper-Contamianted Soil
• David Schumacher '25: Bioremediation of Nickel with Chlorella vulgaris and Chlorella pyrenoidosa
• Annie Zhang '25: The Effects of Natural versus Pharmaceutical Stimulants on Autism Symptoms