Recognizing Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalists

Congratulations to Montgomery Blair High School students Sarah Gao, Andrew Komo, David Wu, and Alice Zhang for being named among the 40 finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search and competing for top honors at a high-profile event in Washington D.C. The Regeneron Science Talent Search was formerly known as the Intel Science Talent Search and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Despite the change in sponsors/names over the decades, it is still the nation's oldest and most prestigious science competition, having honored the nation's most promising young scientists since 1942. Each of the finalists received a $25,000 award and David Wu received an additional $90,000 award for fifth place. See the video of today's presentation.

In her project, Developing Phage Endolysins as Novel Therapeutics for Multi-drug Resistant Bacterial Infections, Sarah Gao identified enzymes that may contribute to improved therapeutics for antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infection.

In his project, Cryptographically Secure Proxy Bidding in Ascending Clock Auctions, Andrew Komo developed a coded system that can be used to protect large-scale online auctions from serious threats, such as cheating and fraud.

In his 5th place award project, Nonuniform Distributions of Patterns of Sequences of Primes in Prime Moduli, David Wu improved current methods for gathering data on prime number patterns, which could impact cryptography and cybersecurity, and potentially make future work on prime number patterns more productive.


In her project, A Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Minimizing Delays in Traffic Intersections, Alice Zhang created a traffic signal protocol to speed the flow of cars and trucks driving through intersections.