Nearly 70 Rockwood Students Earn Ribbons, Awards at Academy of Science-St. Louis Science Fair

A total of 66 students from 13 Rockwood elementary, middle and high schools recently earned ribbons in the Honors Division or in their grade levels for their projects at the Academy of Science-St. Louis Science Fair.

The fair, which was held in virtual and in-person formats, is the premier STEM fair in St. Louis, with nearly 3,000 students from 154 schools around the region competing. Close to $44,000 in scholarships and awards were presented to top students this year.

A total of 11 Rockwood students earned Special Awards from the fair’s sponsors to go along with their ribbons, while 11 earned Honors Division ribbons, 25 earned blue ribbons (top 10 percent of entries), 18 earned red ribbons (top 11-20 percent) and 11 earned white ribbons (top 21-30 percent).

Marquette High students Ayush Vasireddy and Satvik Seetharaman and Lafayette High student Pranav Visveswaran also earned awards in the Honors Division of the fair, which were presented in March.

Congratulations to these outstanding Rockwood students!

Special Award Recipients

• Gershom Arokia Raj and Aditya Kishore, Crestview, VisionRipe (Broadcom Coding with Commitment)
• Aadhira Balan, Woerther, How Effective Are Different Homemade Water Filters? (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Award)
• Noble Ilyashov, LaSalle Springs, Bridging the Gap: The Weight of Expectations (American Concrete Institute Award)
• Kaira Malhotra, Westridge, Smart Car Alert Safety System (Society of Fire Protection Engineers Award)
• Nandita Pradeep, Wild Horse, Tree Equity in St. Louis (MOST 529 Award)
• Satvik Seetharaman, Marquette, Low-Light Classification of Recyclable Waste inside Bins: A Cross-Lighting Evaluation of Convolutional Neural Network Architectures (2nd Place, Honors Division Science Fair)
• Akshaya Suthanthirakumar Kasirajan, Selvidge, Breaking Point : An Experiment to Find the Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity (American Concrete Institute Award)
• Ayush Vasireddy, Marquette, A Cost-Effective Hierarchical Bimodal Nanoporous Gold Sensor for the Electrochemical Detection of Bisphenol F through Drop Casting (1st Place, Honors Division Science Fair)
• Pranav Visveswaran, Lafayette, Cerebroscan: Integrating Deep Learning and Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Point-Of-Care Mapping of Degenerative Brain Disorders (Yale University Award for Outstanding STEM Research)
• Ishaan Vittala, Marquette, PFAS Sentinel: Real-Time Optical Detection and Predictive Modeling of Breakthrough in Adsorption-Based Water Filtration (MOST 529 Award)

Honors Division Ribbons

• Amol Bansal, Marquette, A New Algorithm for Reducing Exceedance in Generalized n×kn Catalan-Type Lattice Paths
• Vibhav Chinta, Marquette, A Computational Model of Ortho Effects in Aniline-Based EGFR Ligands
• Vidyuth Kamesh, Marquette, A Multivariate Statistical Analysis of Discontinuous Carbon Fiber Reinforcement Efficiency in Polymers
• Radha Khare, Marquette, Effects of Milkweed Cardenolides on Monarch Preferences
• Deleena Mehrotra, Marquette, The Effects of 5-HTP and L-Theanine on Behavioral Stress Responses in Drosophila melanogaster
• Avyukth Raghuraman, Lafayette, Quantifying Work of Breathing in Individuals with Biomass-COPD Living in Uganda
• Satvik Seetharaman, Marquette, Low-Light Classification of Recyclable Waste inside Bins: A Cross-Lighting Evaluation of Convolutional Neural Network Architectures
• Prabhjas Singh, Marquette, A Causal and Machine Learning Framework for Personalized First-Line Treatment Selection in Lung Adenocarcinoma
• Tejaswini Sundaresan Venkatesan, Marquette, Neuroinflammatory axis mediates chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment
• Ayush Vasireddy, Marquette, A Cost-Effective Hierarchical Bimodal Nanoporous Gold Sensor for the Electrochemical Detection of Bisphenol F through Drop Casting
• Pranav Visveswaran, Lafayette, Cerebroscan: Integrating Deep Learning and Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Point-Of-Care Mapping of Degenerative Brain Disorders

Blue Ribbons

• Venkata Pavan Alluri, Crestview, Experimental Comparison of Natural Electrochemical Batteries
• Gershom Arokia Raj and Aditya Kishore, Crestview, VisionRipe
• Aadhira Balan, Woerther, How Effective Are Different Homemade Water Filters?
• Aarav Balan, Selvidge, Smart Trash Sorting: Using Image Recognition to Separate Recyclables from Waste
• Mason Fu and Lucas Sun, Wild Horse, To Cap or Not to Cap: An Environmental Engineering Study of Everyday Packaging
• Shreyansh Guduru, Marquette, Integrating Computer Vision and Machine Learning for Live Time ASL Translation
• Thanusree Guduru, Wild Horse, Self Driving Autonomous Robot Snow Plow
• Caleb Hill, LaSalle Springs, PK, Where’s the Best Spot?
• Saumya Janakiram, Selvidge, What’s all the noise?!
• Steve Jesu, Wildwood, Preserve the Artifact
• Dhanasri Kavuri, Selvidge, Generic vs. Name-brand Pills
• Keaton McAndrew, LaSalle Springs, Shells, Traps and Mario Kart Laps
• Grayson Palmer, Rockwood Valley, Which school is the safest?
• Harshitha Prabakar and Isabelle Ter-Hovhannisyan, Marquette, Rainfall Timing and Strategies for Reducing Pesticide Runoff
• Lithiksha Puviarasu, Selvidge, Library Silence Enforcer and Meeting room occupancy detector
• Ayush Rausaria, Marquette, Evolutionary and Functional Analysis of Spike Protein Mutations in SARS-CoV-2
• Diksha Ravi, Wildwood, How Music Affects the Brain
• Shrey Sharma, Marquette, Battling the Burn: An Experimental Analysis of Antacid effectiveness
• Harsh Sodavadiya, Marquette, Analyzing Data Efficiency and Environmental Variability in Image Classification Performance
• Akshaya Suthanthirakumar Kasirajan, Selvidge, Breaking Point : An Experiment to Find the Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity
• Saanvi Upadhyay, Crestview, Which Part Matters: Evaluating the Inhibition Zones of Dandelion Tissue Extracts Against E. coli
• Ishaan Vittala, Marquette, PFAS Sentinel: Real-Time Optical Detection and Predictive Modeling of Breakthrough in Adsorption-Based Water Filtration

Red Ribbons

• Garima Lakshmi Annam, Marquette, The impact of the gut microbiology of ants in behavior and their brain
• Sai Arnav Aruru and Nila Diraviyam, Wild Horse, The Power of Wind!
• Kevin Bray, Chesterfield, Which Material Makes the Best Parachute?
• Stephen Gurusinghe, LaSalle Springs, The rasengan project of the cool era
• Avanthika Sree Kasirajan, Woerther, Soil Erosion
• Tejaswi Kavuri, Woerther, Milk Plastic
• Shreeya Khare, Crestview, Studying the Impacts of Microplastic Contamination on US Statewide Policies Regarding Single-use Plastics
• Dean Kuhn, Fairway, Shocked! An Electrostatic Discharge Experiment
• Yash Kumar, Crestview, Fighting Painkillers
• Kaira Malhotra, Westridge, Smart Car Alert Safety System
• Abeer Mishra and Nimit Pathak, Crestview, Good or Not?
• Nandita Pradeep, Wild Horse, Tree Equity in St. Louis
• Rajan Sankarasubramanian, Marquette, Form vs. Flow — Testing Aerodynamic Efficiency in Car Models
• Ronav Sawardekar, Crestview, Analyzing the Effects of Early Tumor Growth on Intracranial Pressure
• Souravi Upadhyay, Crestview, The Truth in the Pupil: A Neurophysiological Study of Autonomic Response to Deception
• Lily Witt, Green Pines, Power Buffer Matchup

White Ribbons

• Tanvisha Animireddi and Vishwajeeth Ramjee Anna, Wild Horse, Intelligent Crop Protection System for Sustainable Farming
• Rachel Chege and Vihaan Swami, Green Pines, Hydroelectric Power
• Anirudh Hari, Sarvani Muthuraju and Sivani Muthuraju, Wild Horse, Which Material Makes The Darkest Shadow?
• Advay Kabilan, Crestview, Investigating the effect of membrane pore size on protein loss: A model of Nephrotic Syndrome
• Aarush Mumbala, Crestview, How to enhance the electrical output of natural Electrochemical batteries?
• David Van de Riet, Pond, Can You Find the Camouflaged Butterfly?
• Addison Wilke, LaSalle Springs, Stain Scene Investigation: The Search for the Best Ink Cleaner