Broadcom Foundation and Society for Science are thrilled to announce that nine students from the Atlanta, Georgia area are among the top 300 middle school scientists in the country. They have been named to a list of the Top 300 Broadcom MASTERS® — the nation's premier Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) competition for middle school students.

The students in Atlanta include:

  • Pranav Sambhu, Fulton Science Middle School

"I often found myself distracted and procrastinating online and realized that it was also a prominent issue for many other people as well; this is why I sought to create an application (Chrome extension) that would alert the user when they were off task. The extension works by asking the user what they would like to work on (a.ka. their focus topic) and my Chrome extension uses machine learning to alert the user when the website they were on wasn't relevant to their focus topic. The application does this by having a front-end which is the Chrome extension and what the user communicates with, and it has a backend which is the server that hosts the machine learning algorithm and calculates how similar the user's focus topic is to the website they are on."

  • Jacob Nguyen, Five Forks Middle School

"My project was to test different thermoplastics used for 3D printing with the fused deposition modeling method and determine which material was optimal to print a pediatric prosthetic foot. I worked with my older brother, Luc, who was a sophomore at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology. I focused on making the foot while Luc designed and 3D printed an adjustable pylon to be put together to make a prosthetic leg for children."

  • Akshadha Mehta, Dodgen Middle School

"As COVID-19 pandemic continues, face masks usage has significantly increased posing an environmental challenge. Because most face masks are made of polypropylene, a type of plastic, one possible solution is recycling mask waste in construction industry. The objective of this project is to utilize mask waste in combination with fly ash and lime to reduce the use of cement to create Maskrete, an eco-friendly alternative to traditional concrete."

  • Om Guin, Fulton Science Middle School

"My project makes it possible to continuously monitor indoor and outdoor air quality and suggests possible simple mitigation action such as turning on the fan in the central air conditioner if the building uses a high Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values (MERV) rating filter in the air conditioner, or opening the windows when the air outside is of better quality."

  • Nyambura Sallinen and Keshvee Sekhda, Lanier Middle School

"Lung cancer has caused hundreds of thousands of people to be affected greatly, and it is also the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. There have been higher false-negative and false-positive rates that have resulted from doctors having more patients to be screened and inspected. Combining the problems that thousands of people are dying and the impact on doctors as well as our passion for this topic, we decided to create an app that can identify lung cancer using image classification, sound classification, and a variety of mathematics."

  • Prapti Bhamare, Richard Hull Middle School

"My invention is the deactivator, which conserves water that is wasted when a touchless faucet is accidentally activated. This often happens with modern touchless faucets, when minor objects go near the sensor or hover over the sensor, the sensor gets activated, and if there is no one to turn it off the water can run and cause water wastage. To fix this problem the Deactivator covers the sensor so that nothing can activate it."

  • Mason Below, Ridgeview Charter Middle School
  • Maxwell Cleveland, Ridgeview Charter Middle School

 
The Top 300 MASTERS were selected from 1,807 students from 47 states and three territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).

The Broadcom MASTERS, a program founded and produced by the Society for Science, seeks to inspire young scientists, engineers and innovators to solve the grand challenges of the 21st century.