Ana Humphrey Takes Best in Category at International Science Fair!
Tuesday, May 21, 2018
Huge congratulations to stellar student scientist Ana Humphrey, a Best of Category winner at last week’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) for her project Finding Exoplanets by Assessing the Dynamical Packing of Kepler Three- and Four-Candidate Systems.
Every honors student in grades 7 -11 does a science fair project. The best go on to our city fair. The best of those go on to the regional fair and the best of those go to state. The top two projects at regional fair & state go on to ISEF.
Making it to ISEF is an incredible feat. Only three ACPS students have placed high enough at the regional or state level to move on to ISEF in the past 10 years. Of those three students, the highest place earned before Ana was second place, which represents roughly the top 10 percent of the more than 1,800 participants. Ana won Best in Category—one of the top 22 projects out of 1,800 international finalists this year, representing more than 75 countries, regions and territories.
Congratulations to Ana for her success at ISEF and for her $5,000 prize. In addition, $1,000 will be awarded to the region and $1,000 to TC Williams for their science research program.
January 5, 2018
T.C. Williams junior Ana Humphrey was recognized by the Science Museum of Virginia, in partnership with the governor, with an Outstanding STEM (science, engineering, technology and math) award for using STEM to make the world a better place. Ana was named a STEM Phenom award winner for her passion and advocacy for the environment in her community and for her accomplishments in science research.
The award is one of four given by the Science Museum of Virginia that celebrates Virginia citizens and enterprises that strengthen the Commonwealth’s position as a STEM leader and inspire tomorrow’s STEM innovators. Ana has been invited to receive her award at a ceremony in early March.
If her name and face seem familiar, they should!
In June 2017, Ana was named a runner-up for the grand prize at the 2017 U.S. Stockholm Junior Water Prize, the most prestigious youth awards for water-related science projects. Ana was one of two runners-up who competed against 49 other projects, one from every state, and received $1,000 for her project. In the spring, Ana won the state level of Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition and went on to represent the state of Virginia in the national competition. Ana also previously won first place at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in San Diego, California.
Last spring, Ana took second place in the physics category in the state science fair for her project, ‘The Mathematical Identification of Exoplanet Candidates through N-body Simulations.’ Ana tested a method for discovering planets orbiting stars that are outside of our solar system, also called exoplanets. Her goal is to use the simulation to discover new exoplanets. As the grand prize winner of the regional science fair, she went to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in California last May.
And, in 2016 Ana took the Grand Alternate Prize for her project, ‘ColiFind: A Digital Image Analysis Application to Identify Escherichia coli Colonies in Coliscan Easygel Tests.’ Ana Humphrey took the Grand Alternate Prize for her project, ‘ColiFind: A Digital Image Analysis Application to Identify Escherichia coli Colonies in Coliscan Easygel Tests.’
Congratulations, Ana! We look forward to your continued success.