New Mexico Junior Academy of Science 2024 Competitions

The NM Junior Academy of Science regional and state competitions took place from February 2024 through April 2024. The Academy sponsors six geographic regions across the state, four of which held competitions in 2024. Students were judged on a written manuscript and a timed oral presentation of their own science research. In most cases these are the same students who enter their research projects in local science and engineering competitions. Prize money was awarded thanks to a grant from Sandia National Laboratories.

Regional Awards were: 1st Place=$200, 2nd Place=$150, 3rd Place=$100
State Awards were: 1st Place=$350, 2nd Place=$250, 3rd Place=$150

A special thanks to New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology State Science Fair staff who hosts the competition; and the Academic Center for Technology (ACT) who manages PowerPoint files on the Tech computer system. ACT was able to help a student give his PowerPoint presentation via video while he was traveling to a college interview on the day of the state competition. The NM Academy of Science director for the JAS competition is Lynn Brandvold. She is diligent in her efforts to incentivize students’ work in science research in all disciplines.

Congratulations to these state winners

Junior Division

First Place, David Brooke, Developing a Desalination Solar Still Utilizing Mechanisms to Increased Effective Surface Area, Albuquerque Institute for Math and Science

Second Place, Lucas Rychener, How Does Caffeine Affect the Regeneration of Planarians?, St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School

Third Place, Linus Plohr, Duonumero: Multilingualism in Math, Los Alamos Middle School

Fourth Place, Isabella Halley, Magic Bacteria: Exploring Bacterial Transformation and Antibiotic Resistance with the pGreen Plasmid, NM Connections Academy

Senior Division

First Place, George Privett, The Beetles, Rio Rancho High School [abstract]

Second Place  Kyuryeon Kim, Learning Drug Representation Using Drug-Drug Similarity for the Large Scale Prediction of Drug-Drug Interactions, La Cueva High School

Third Place  Gene Huntley, A Realtime Camera Fusion 3D Model with a Novel Feature-Matching and Star Identification-Based Calibration for Tracking Smoke Plumes, V. Sue Cleveland High School

Fourth Place  Jordyn Begay, Novel Simultaneous Spectrophotometry Applied to Three-Tablet Formulation of Human Immunodeficency Virus Medication Containing EMT, TDF, and RPV, Navajo Preparatory School

A list of Regional winners can be found here.