Hendricken students impress at RI Science and Engineering Fair
Can a machine learn to diagnose breast cancer? Is decomposing compost an energy source that might be harnessed to keep you warm? What are the effects of reading consumer reviews on a user’s experience with a product?
Those questions and more were posed by this year’s contingent of 11 Bishop Hendricken students who participated in the Rhode Island Science and Engineering Fair (RISEF) on March 17 and 18. And, like a chemical reaction, each of those 11 students sparked and earned their place in the competition.
According to Mark Fontaine, Director of RISEF, the purpose of the fair is to promote science and engineering education and investigation by students who participate in authentic, real-world, independent research.
This year, approximately 200 students, representing more than 30 schools, participated in the state’s premier science and engineering educational competition. They were chosen from more than 2,000 students who completed science projects at their schools. Students competed for first-, second- and third-place awards as well as scholarships.
Hendricken’s Science Fair participants were Sean Jacob Alcordo, Michael Cullen, John Fogarty, Thomas Holmes, James Laboissonniere, Casey McQuesten, Jack Pedro, Christopher Relyea, Robert Schattle, David Steets and Paarth Tandon.
Judges used a rubric broken down into major categories: originality, scientific thought, clarity and thoroughness, among others. Special attention is given to the students’ papers, typically 12 to 25 pages in length. A scorecard is then generated that ranged from zero to 95, which is used to tabulate winners.
Hendricken’s participants took full advantage of the opportunity the fair presented as all of their participants were awarded a ribbon for their methods.
Sean Jacob Alcordo and Paarth Tandon both received rankings of Senior Division Best in Fair Finalists for their respective projects, Feet Designs of a Klann Linkage and Diagnosing Breast Cancer Using Machine Learning. Tandon’s project about breast cancer also earned him the honor of Best in Fair Senior Division Alternate, what is essentially third place in the Senior Division of the fair.
“I pretty much used a form of artificial intelligence to make a program that can diagnose whether breast cancer tissue is malignant or benign,” said Tandon, a junior who began working on his project in September. “I made four types of these networks and compared which one works the best. I then found that the best one runs at about 93 percent accuracy. It learned from data I collected from the University of Wisconsin, and I used it to train my network to be able to classify these cancer tissues.”
Hendricken took home two first place grants, for Michael Cullen’s project entitled Time of Day and the Propagation of HF Signals, and David Steets who explored the electronic side of the fair with his project, Measuring Data Speeds in RAID Arrays.
Steets’s project worked with a form of computer storage that utilizes an array of smaller capacity drives, coupled with various programs, that makes them think the array is one drive.
“If you pill out one drive, you still have all the data on the other drive. If your hard drive fails you lose everything. But with this, if a drive fails, only one component fails and the data is stored on the rest of them,” said Steets. “RAID arrays are exponentially cheaper than hard drives.”
John Fogarty, a freshman at Hendricken, took inspiration from the Ocean State and studied alternative energy sources with his project, Energy from Waves, that earned him a second place grant.
“My project looks at electricity from ocean waves. I built my own generator type machine in which I would simulate an ocean wave, and a bobber would go up and down with the water which would pull a magnet that’s inserted in a tube wrapped in copper wire which would create electricity,” said Fogarty. “It didn’t generate much electricity but it was kind of a crude generator. So with progress and more trial I believe I could generate more electricity.”
Jack Pedro also explored alternative energy sources with his project, Compost Heat Harnessed for Heat Source. Pedro insists that while compost was used, the odor wasn’t bad. His efforts earned him a second place grant.
“I’m using the heat that’s produced by compost and I’m turning it into heat that can be used to heat a room or a building without the smell, there’s no smell. I put tubing in a pile of compost in a bucket, and I ran that tubing into another bucket of the same size,” said Pedro, who said the highest temperature he achieved was about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. “I used a 12-volt fan that blew air into the tubing and when it ran through the compost the compost heated up the tube which heated up the air.”
Rounding out Hendricken’s performance were the following students who each achieved a second place grant for their work:
Thomas Holmes, Comparing Random Number Generators; James Laboissonniere, The Effect of Reading Consumer Reviews on User’s Experiences with a Product; Casey McQuesten, The Effects of Organic and Synthetic Soil on Plant Growth, Christopher Relyea, Protein and Ice Cream: Prolonging Melt Time; and Robert Schattle, Playing with Fire. SCIENCE 1:
SCIENCE 2
