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Nine students win awards at state fair at MIT

Nine students brought home awards, including a first prize, from the Massachusetts State Science and Engineering Fair, held May 1-2 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Falmouth Academy and Falmouth High School were the only Cape and Islands schools that had winners at the fair.

First prize: Caroline Cotto ‘10, Barnstable, won The 2009 EMC Corporation $1,000 Award for her project “Where in the World is WWE3: probing for microbes in a new bacterial division.” She looked for a kind of bacteria discovered a year ago in wastewater in France but not yet found in the United States.

Third prize: Aimee Church ‘12, North Falmouth, won a Prentice Hall Book Award for her research of oxygen isotope ratios in microscopic benthic foraminifera shells from deep sea sediments near Indonesia to determine the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Her project title was “Nature’s little thermometers: oxygen isotope records from foraminifera shells.”

Third prize: Katherine Bianchi ‘12, West Barnstable, won the American Society of Safety Engineers Award. To see if the sound vibrations of offshore wind turbines affect marine animals, Katherine studied “The Effects of Sound Vibration (50 Hz and 100 Hz levels) on the heart Rate of Daphnia Magna, a tiny, translucent crustacean.”

Third prize: Morgan Opie ‘12, Cotuit, won The 2009 Thermo Fisher Scientific Award for her research into how effectively different commonly worn fabrics block harmful ultraviolet rays.

Honorable mentions to Tyler Barron ‘12, Falmouth, for “The effect of ocean acidification as a result of global warming”; Libby Faus ‘11, Falmouth, for “The effect of oil on the growth of Cyclotella”; Tessa Hulburt ‘11, Falmouth, for “The effect of road deicers sodium chloride and calcium magnesium acetate”; Lyon Van Voorhis ‘11, Mattapoisett, for “Garden turf war: allelopathy;” and Julia Signell ‘10, Falmouth, for “The effect of rennet and lipase on the firmness of cheese.” Tyler, Libby, Tessa and Lyon received Harvard University Press Book Awards and Julia won a Harvard University Press Book Award.