Local students take home $100,000 prize in national science competition

Local students take home $100,000 prize in national science competition

December 4, 2006

NEW YORK, N.Y. (WATE) -- Three Oak Ridge High School seniors earned top team honors in a prestigious science and math competition held over the weekend in New York.

The students -- Scott Horton, Scott Molony, and Steven Arcangeli -- will share a $100,000 team prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology.

Read more about the winning students

Their winning entry in the national competition was research in a promising technique that some day may help scientists engineer biofuel from plant material.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Nagiza Samatova, Senior Research Scientist in the Computing Sciences and Mathematics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the students developed a supercomputing tool to help biologists identify key genes involved in efficiently making bacteria.

More than 1,000 teams competed in regional competitions last month. Horton, Molony and Arcangel were one of just six teams to reach the finals in New York.

ORNL scientists, aided in part by the work of the Oak Ridge students, recently received a major grant to continue their work in the biofuel study.

Last year, a team from Oak Ridge High School placed fourth in the Siemens competition for their work with supercomputing and data mining.

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