Seniors Nikki Bedekar, Amanda Chow and Kevin Garbe were announced among the 300 semifinalists for the Intel Science Talent Search competition on Jan. 9.
Bedekar’s project is titled “A Novel Environmentally Promising Alternative to Lead-Based Piezoelectric Materials — A Study of Lead Free (NaK)(NbSb)O3-LiTaO3-BaZrO3 Ceramics.”
She spent seven weeks in China this past summer studying piezoelectricity, a branch of materials science. Since many materials use lead but are toxic to humans and most biological creatures, the materials cannot be used in biological environments, Bedekar said. Thus, she looked at a branch of alternatives that have the same performance as lead.
“Doing research in any setting is really interesting, but I was even luckier because I got to improve my Chinese at the same time,” Bedekar said. “And it’s [also] interesting to see how different people approach research.”
Chow’s project, called “Electrocatalytic Hydrogenation of Furfural using Solid Polymer Electrolyte Electrolyzer,” involved the chemical modification of bio-oil, a renewable fuel derived from plant material.
Chow was also named a Siemens semifinalist this past October.
Garbe’s project is named “Patterns in the Coefficients of Powers of Polynomials over a Finite Field.”
According to Garbe, it combined number theory, combinatorics, polynomials and matrix algebra to discover and prove several theorems that improve the understanding of fractals, mathematical sets.
“The research is relevant to a range of practical uses since fractals have been used in diverse applications such as cryptography, seismology and even weather forecasting,” Garbe said.
Garbe started his research in May with a mentor from the Research Science Institute (RSI). He wrote a draft while at RSI in MIT during the summer, then continued his research through the fall.
The names of finalists will be announced on Jan. 23. The final competition for 40 students will take place in Washington, D.C., on March 10.
http://www.societyforscience.org/document.doc?id=442
