12 young scientists dazzle to take top prizes in Intel-Israel competition
Winning projects include research on a computerized music program and a tiny rescue satellite
A large number of girls and Jerusalemites won the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition, in which three projects each received the first, second and third prizes. First- place prizes were awarded on Tuesday to Noam Yungerman of Jerusalem’s Israel Arts and Sciences Academy for his work on “the growth and decay of sticky fingering structures” in the field of life sciences and mathematics; Noa Eden of Jerusalem’s Boyer School on the “role of the Pax6 factor in preserving the identity of adult beta cells in the pancreas”; and Kedem Snir, also of the Arts and Sciences Academy, on the coding of the predictive relations in languages focusing on themes and sign languages. The winners of the 18th annual competition, which was organized by the Bloomfield Science Museum, the Science and Education Ministries and Intel- Israel, are scheduled to travel to Pittsburgh in May to represent Israel at Intel’s ISEF young scientists competition and receive academic scholarships. Second-place prizes were awarded to Noa Chen, also of the Arts and Sciences Academy, on the Ashera goddess in biblical times and the times of the Sages, who will fly to Germany for a science camp; Roi Gil and Nadav Shalev of the ORT School in Kiryat Tivon for their work on a computerized music program that turns aural music into written notes, who will go to a competition in Milan; and Better Shmayev and May Shushan, also of the Ort School in Kiryat Tivon, on their system for regulating blood flow and pressure in plaster casts, who will go to Intel-ISEF as well. Third place was taken by Avner Okon and Uri Lavi of Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb Yeshiva High School for their work on coding the structure of the bacterial ribosome in the presence of antibiotics, and they too will go to Milan; Yarden Carmel of the engineering high school in Herzliya for inventing a tiny flying satellite that can rescue an injured or sick person from afar, who will also go to Intel-ISEF; and Guy Shtotland of the Amit Comprehensive School in Beersheba, for his work on mathematical “combinatorial monsters,” who will fly to the Milano competition. A special prize was given to Ta’ili Hardiman – also of the Jerusalem Arts and Sciences Academy – for her work on the “aesthetics of evil in cinema.” Eight other projects won honorable mentions. A total of 59 projects reached the Jerusalem finals, with 26 of them in the fields of technology and computer science, but there were still numerous projects in anthropology, history, linguistics and other “soft-science” fields. The ceremony was held at the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus, with Prof. Ruth Arnon, president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, judges’ panel chairman Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund and Intel-Israel officials present.