Indiana Students Earn More Than $54,000 in Scholarships at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

Business Wire,  May 25, 2005  

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PHOENIX -- High School Students from Columbus, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, Kouts, Pekin, South Bend, Terre Haute and Waterloo Take Home Scholarships for Science Fair Projects; Indy to Host 2006 Intel ISEF Event

Eleven Indiana high school students earned scholarship awards totaling approximately $54,300 last week at the 2005 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, Ariz.

To celebrate the successes of these Indiana students and to promote Indianapolis' selection as host city for the 2006 Intel ISEF, Governor Mitch Daniels has declared the week of May 23-29 as Indiana Science Education Week. The 2006 event takes place in Indianapolis May 7-13 at the Indiana Convention Center.

Ben Brewer, Erin Drabek and Angie Sells (Pekin), Abigail Hines (Fort Wayne), Jordan Hurwich (South Bend), Julie Loza (Kouts), Kaleb Naegeli (Kokomo), Jennifer Nagel (Waterloo), James Powell and Tiffany Sain-Yee Ko (Terre Haute) and Erin Rosswurm (Columbus) were among the more than 1,400 high school students from around the world that competed to earn scholarships and awards in excess of $3 million at the Phoenix Civic Plaza.

The Intel ISEF is the world's largest pre-college celebration of science. Held annually in May, the Intel ISEF brings together over 1,300 students from approximately 45 nations to compete for scholarships, tuition grants, internships, and scientific field trips. Science Service founded the ISEF in 1950 and Intel is the title sponsor of the prestigious international competition.

A pair of juniors, Jennifer Nagel from Dekalb High School, and Angie Sells from Eastern High School in Pekin, notched partial tuition scholarships of $20,000 from Indiana University for their projects in behavioral and social sciences, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, computer sciences, earth science, space science, environmental sciences, mathematics, medicine and health, microbiology, physics and zoology. Nagel also won a third-place award from Intel of $1,000 in chemistry.

Sells' school mates - seniors Ben Brewer and Emily Drabek - both won scholarship awards from Intel. Brewer was awarded a second-place $1,500 scholarship for his microbiology project, while Drabek earned $1,000 from Intel for her second-place project in physics.

Orchard Day School's Hines, who is a junior, was awarded $300 for her project that involved the study of natural products that are relevant in biochemistry, botany, chemistry, medicine, microbiology and zoology from the American Society of Pharmacognosy, and $1,500 from the U.S. Air Force.

Another junior, South Bend Adams' Jordan Hurwich, produced one of eight projects that earned $2,000 in common stock from United Technologies Corporation. He also received a third-place engineering award of $1,000 from Intel.

Two Terre Haute South students - Tiffany Sain-Yee Ko and James Powell - earned awards for their projects. Junior Sain-Yee Ko claimed a first-place award of $3,000 from Intel in zoology. Powell, who is a senior, earned a third-place scholarship award of $1,500 in mathematics from IBM.

The American Association for Clinical Chemistry awarded $300 to Loza, who is a sophomore attending Kouts High School, for her project that best demonstrated the use of chemistry to diagnose diseased or abnormal states in humans and/or animals.

Finally, Northwestern High School's Kaleb Naegeli received $500 for a medicine and health project from Merck Research Laboratories. Erin Rosswurm, a senior at Columbus East High, achieved similar results with a fourth-place award of $500 for biochemistry project from Agilent Technologies.

Twenty-six Indiana students earned the experience of a lifetime to compete at the Intel ISEF. Each was one of more than 3 million students that competed at various science fairs from around the globe in hopes of qualifying for Phoenix.

Note to Editors: A complete list of those that competed in Phoenix is listed following this news release.

In addition, a delegation of the Host Committee from Indiana organizing the Intel ISEF 2006 also was in Phoenix researching the most effective ways to organize the Indianapolis event.

Not only are more than 1,400 students expected to be in Indianapolis next May, but the students are normally accompanied by their parents and teachers. In addition, more than 1,200 judges with PhDs and 1,200 volunteers are needed to stage the event. Organizers in Phoenix had another 5,000 students, their parents and teachers and other enthusiasts attend the event to get a first-hand glimpse of the different projects at the Fair.

Historically, the Intel ISEF has garnered significant economic impact. The 2004 event was worth more $10 million to Portland, Ore.

Intel ISEF 2006 is co-hosted by Science Education Foundation of Indiana (SEFI) and the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association (ICVA), which successfully won the bid to stage the event four years ago. The committee is comprised of leadership within the SEFI and ICVA, as well as various community leadership within the state's science, education and technology industries. The committee is operating under management from co-chairs Dr. William Gilmore and Alisa Wright.