Past Winners
2024
1st place: Audrey Kaye, Of Rodents and Researchers: How Including Female Rats Affects Neuroscience Knowledge and Culture
2nd place : Candelas Distefano, The Scientific Origins of Scientists: A Psychological Account of Curiosity and Interest Development
3rd place: David Wang, The Closing Gate: A History and Defense of the Sino-American Research Relationship
2023
1st place: Manu Sundaresan, Social Epigenetics: Tackling the Dynamic Human Genome
2nd place: Sophia Kang, Temperature-dependent sex determination: Evolutionary significance and the adaptive potential of sea turtles to climate change
3rd place: Kathryn Guo, Could you take a drug to learn a new language?
2022
1st place: Jielu Yu, The Need for Data Disaggregation and Population-Specific Interventions for Asian Americans
2nd place: Isaac Rand, Reviving Civic Data: Methods in Automatically Digitizing 1940 Census Block Maps
3rd place: Christopher Bo-min Song, The Mechanism of Regeneration in Cephalopods
2021
1st place: Hannah Richter, Our Big Blue (Noisy) Ocean: Effects of Noise Pollution on Marine Invertebrates
2nd place: Alex Emerson, Kelp Forests: A Surprising Ally in Climate Change Mitigation
3rd place: Jaeda Roberts, Potential Utilization of CRISPR for Clinical, Ecological, and Agricultural Advances
2020
1st place: Ahit Kaan Tarhan, Art & Science: Photochromism
2nd place: Ethan Pritikin, Creating Functional Algorithms in Healthcare Diagnostics Using AI
3rd place: Tiffany Vaughan, Florence Nightingale: Nursing A Calling
2019
1st place: Alex Campili, What are the Odds? A Call for Statistical Integrity in the Age of Big Data
2nd place: Eva Haraldsdottir, Hg in the System: 3000 Years of Andean Mercury Emission
3rd place: Nivedina Sarma, Millikan’s Verification of the Photoelectric Effect Lights the Way for Regenerative Medicine
2018
1st place: Jacob Johnson, Long Distance Migration in Seafaring Birds
2nd place: Nikita Mehta, The Opioid Epidemic: Limiting the Use of Opioids in Anesthesia
3rd place: Sara Furukawa, Nomura's Jellyfish Blooms in the Sea of Japan
2017
1st place: Shug Miller, Our Brains Work Better on Curiosity: The Connection between Curiosity and Memory Retention, and the Implications for Reform of the Education System
2nd place: Emi Lemberg, Human Gene Editing: Miracle Technology or the End of Evolution?
3rd place: Clara Sava-Segal, Insight into the Evolutionary Purpose of Memory: Pairing Behavioral and Neurobiological Data
2016
1st place: Stephanie Williams, Complexity Theory and Immunity: Chaotic Hearts Lead to New Understanding of Depression
2nd place: Colin Garon, Colliding Cosmologies: Smallpox Epidemics in Jesuit Canada, 1637-1641
3rd place: Isaac Krone, Oh No, Not Again: What Happens When a Whale Hits the Ground
2015
1st place: Xavier Zahnle, A Glimpse Into Our Future's Past: Plastic Debris In the Stratigraphic Record
2nd place: Stephanie Bi, Migrant Mysteries: An Elucidation of the Hispanic Health Paradox
3rd place: Haozhe Shan, Social Rejection and Health
2014
1st place: Elle Sullivan, REM Sleep: The Enigma that Remains
2nd place* : Michael Begun, A History of Inconceivability
2nd place* : Sydney Reitz, Starting with the Man in the Mirror: Psychopathy, Mirror Neurons, and the Legal System
*This year there was a tie for 2nd place.
2013
1st place: Chelsea Leu, The Demise of the Ancient Maya: A Cautionary Tale?
2nd place: Hannah Mark, Polychlorinated Biphenyls and the Remediation of the Hudson River
2012
1st place: Noah Weisz, Unidentified Flowering Objects: Science Education, Environmental Education, and the Mysteries of the Backyards
2nd place: Annie Wang, Devil Transmissible Facial Tumors
2011
1st place: Anna Griffith, Eating Like Cavemen
2nd place: Jeremy Bancroft Brown, Radiation Dose and Cancer Risk from CT Scans
2010
1st place: Peter Borah, Karl Popper and Antarctic Ice: The Climate Debate and its Problems
2nd place: Michael Roytburd, The Oceanic Acid Trip: Why CO2
2009
1st place: Laura Felley, The discovery of the polymerase chain reaction: A scientific (and personal) journey
2nd place: Laurel K. Mylonas-Orwig, Could Not the Race of Men Be Improved?
2008
1st place: Laura Felley, Combating the Spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: A Question of Research and Public Reaction
2nd place: Conor Hughes, Sellout
2007
1st place: Eric Chan, Climate Change and Coral Bleaching
2nd place: Bihui Li, Colliding Interests: The Future of Particle Physics
2006
1st place: Stephen Brusatte, The Survival of Science: What Scientists must do to defuse the evolution controversy
2nd place: Daniel Issaac Wolf, After Petroleum: The transition to a New Transportation Fuel Source
2005
1st place: Bihui Li, Kin
2nd place: Stephen Brusatte, Engineers of our own Disaster: Dike Construction, Land Reclamation, and their Hidden Consequences
2004
1st place: Craig Segall, Lost Worlds: The Late Pleistocene Extinctions and the Modern Crisis
2nd place: Stephen Brusatte, Continents Adrift and Sea-Floor Spreading: The Revolution of Plate Tectonics