Students Earn Top Awards at 40th Annual Research Science Institute

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McLean, Va. (August 10, 2023) – The Center for Excellence in Education (CEE) is pleased to announce the award winners for oral and written presentations chosen from 100 participants by an eminent panel of judges at the 40th annual Research Science Institute (RSI) jointly sponsored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Each of the award winners received $1,000 scholarship awards from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

 

Top 5 Written Presentations:

 

Radostin Cholakov Barutin, Smolyan – Bulgaria

Distributional Quantization of Large Language Models

Mentors: Prof. Yoon Kim and Han Guo, MIT EECS/CSAIL

 

Yifan Kang Guandong, China

CNOT-Optimal Circuit Synthesis

Mentor: Henry Ma, MIT CSAIL

 

Jerry Liu – Pleasanton, CA

Precision and Efficiency: An Automated System for
Laser Alignment in Optical Experiments

Mentors: Dr. Yuqin Sophia Duan and Dr. Qiushi Gu, MIT EECS

 

Naomi Park – Riverside, CT

A Comprehensive Framework for Visualization of
Natural and Anthropogenic Radioactivity for Applications in Environmental Monitoring

Mentors: Prof. Haruko Murakami Wainwright and Dr. Livia Fernandes Barros, MIT Nuclear Science and Civil and Environmental Engineering

 

Hanming Ye – Shanghai, China

The Stable Picard Groups of the Exterior Algebras E(n) 

Mentor: David Johnwoon Lee, MIT Math

 

Top 5 Oral Presentations:

 

Alan Bu – Exeter, New Hampshire

Concatenations of Two Incidence Matrices, Spanning Trees in Planar Graphs: Two Related Problems

Mentor: Yuchong Pan, MIT Math

 

Radostin Cholakov – Barutin, Smolyan – Bulgaria

Distributional Quantization of Large Language Models

Mentors: Prof. Yoon Kim and Han Guo, MIT EECS/CSAIL

 

Evrim Sude Con – Istanbul. Turkey

Investigating Factors Correlated with Patient Response to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Depression

Mentor: Dr. Daniel Press and Dr. Subha Subramanian, Harvard BIDMC

 

Alexa Fein – Coral Gables, FL

Decoding Familial Cancer: Whole-genome Sequencing of Multiple Myeloma Families Enables Identification of Candidate Genes

Mentors Prof. Irene Ghobrial and Dr. Jean-Baptiste Alberge, Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School

Kah Shuen Gan – Singapore, Singapore

Yeast-based High-throughput Screening of Plasmodium falciparum Phosphodiesterase Beta (PDEβ) for Malaria Drug Discovery

Mentor: Prof. Charles Hoffman, Boston College Biology

In addition, Minh Nguyen, a student from Hus High School for Gifted Students in Hanoi, Vietnam, was chosen by his RSI peers for the top honor—Rickoid of the Year—at the RSI. The award recognizes academic acumen, leadership, and personal demeanor, and is named for the late Admiral H.G. Rickover, father of the nuclear Navy and a founder of CEE.

“These scholars are our future creators, inventors, scientists, and leaders of the 21st century, and their research represents a high level of academic acumen,” said Joann P. DiGennaro, CEE President. “RSI students experience graduate-level research and camaraderie with other academically talented STEM students.”

RSI is offered cost-free for students competitively chosen for excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Students are selected by CEE’s committee of professional educators and RSI alumni based on high school records, personal essays, standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, research experience, potential for leadership, and honors and awards in math and science. To date, over 3,000 high school students - representing every U.S. state and 61 nations - have experienced RSI.

The 2023 RSI summer program (June 25 to August 5), collaboratively sponsored with MIT, consisted of one week of theoretical classroom work, followed by four-and-a-half weeks of innovative research under the mentorship of leading scientists, engineers, and researchers in the students’ respective areas of interest. In their final week, students demonstrate their research work through written academic papers and oral presentations to their peers and a panel of judges.

 

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About the Center for Excellence in Education

CEE, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, was founded in 1983 by the late Admiral H.G. Rickover and Joann P. DiGennaro, President of the Center. The Center’s mission is to nurture high school and university scholars to careers of excellence and leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and to encourage collaboration between and among scientific and technological leaders in the global community. CEE sponsors the Research Science Institute (RSI), USA Biolympiad (USABO), Teacher Enrichment Program (TEP), and STEM Lyceums. For more information, visit www.cee.org.

Media Contact:

Tom Flavell, (703) 448-9062 ext. 237

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