The votes have been tallied and the polls have closed. This year, over 180,000 votes were cast for Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair People’s Choice Awards and the competition was fierce! People voted for the project they felt was not only the most creative and innovative, but the one that they also felt had the most potential to positively change the world. Throughout the voting period, several key players fought for the lead. And now, here are the final winners:

With over 60,000 votes, first place goes to Akash Krishnan and Matthew Fernandez of Oregon Episcopal High School! For their project, “The Classification and Recognition of Emotions in Prerecorded Speech”, they developed a program that with 77% accuracy can determine and classify emotions from an input signal. The real-world implications of emotion recognition are great: it has applications in security, gaming, user-computer interactions, lie-detection, and enhancing synthesized speech. Krishnan and Fernandez plan to pursue this project in the next 2 years and acquire a patent.

Second place was taken home by Texan Amy Chyao. Her project, “Lights, Quantum Dots, Action!” developed a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment which uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer cells. The results show that her work has significant potential for future application in cancer treatment. Chyao hopes to pursue a Ph.D. and M.D. and become a college chemistry professor and biomedical researcher.

Last but certainly not least, taking home third place, was Majdolene Khweis of Taos, New Mexico, with her project, “Don’t Let It Slide IV: Fire Factor!” After seeing landslides in California and New Mexico due to forest fires and failed re-seeding efforts, she became interested in preserving the environment. Her project sought to use a biodegradeable polymer to assist with the regeneration of soil and plants, and to prevent erosion of slopes to protect and regenerate the environment as well as human life and property.

Krishnan and Fernandez have won themselves a brand new laptop, while Chyao will have a netbook and Khweis takes home an iTouch- not too shabby!

CONGRATULATIONS to all the competitors and winners, and a huge thank you to YOU-the voter!

Tags: Inpire, Intel, Intel ISEF, Math and Science, People's Choice

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