Blair has most Intel semifinalists in the nation

Thirteen Blazers were selected to be among a group of 300 semifinalists in the 64th Intel Science Talent Search, according to a Jan. 12 Intel press release. No school in the country had more than Blair.

Winston Churchill High School and Walt Whitman High School each had one semifinalist for a total of fifteen semifinalists in the county. In total, there were 20 semifinalists from Maryland.

Blair also had thirteen semifinalists last year, placing second to Stuyvesant High School in New York City, which had nineteen, for most in the nation. This year, Stuyvesant had five semifinalists.

Semifinalists were chosen from 1,600 applicants representing 508 high schools in 47 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Judging was based on their "individual research ability, scientific originality and creative thinking," according to the press release.

Each semifinalist will receive a $1,000 scholarship for their achievements, with a matching amount going to Blair to be used for the school's science and math programs. Forty finalists will be selected on Jan. 26 to attend an all-expense paid trip to D.C. from Mar. 10-15 for final judging, where they will compete for $530,000 in scholarship money. The top 10 finalists will be honored Mar. 15 at a black-tie banquet, with the first overall finalist receiving a $100,000 scholarship.

The semifinalists' names and project titles are:

• Ameer Abutaleb, A Nonlinear Analog Scattering VLSI Model for the Cochlea


• Peter Bullen, Effect of Grain Misorientation Texture on the Fractal Character of Heated Calcite


• Patrick Detzner, The Effects of Powder Concentration and Wire Length on the Attenuation of Microwave Powder Filters


• Jeffrey Dunn, Evaluation of Soil Moisture Predictions from GSWP Land Surface Schemes


• Michael Forbes, Capacitated Vehicle Routing and the k-Delivery n-Traveling Salesman Problem


• Abigail Fraeman, Modeling the Distribution of Comets Around the Star IRC +10216


• Sherri Geng, Automated Seizure Detection Using Statistical Analysis of EEG Time-Domain Signals


• Justin Kovac, The Effects of Warm Core Rings on Hurricane Intensification in the Gulf of Mexico


• Tencia Lee, Probing Superstring/M-Theory with Quantum Mechanics


• Renee Park, The Effects of Atmospheric Turbulence on Simulated Starlight in a Low-Pressure Telescope Environment


• Prasanna Vasudevan, Toward Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease: Developing a Method to Determine Activity in the Cerebral Cortex Using Surface Analysis


• Samuel Wight, Improved Sequences for Code Division Multiple Access in 3-D Imaging LADAR


• Kenhui Yin, A Mathematical Model of AV Conduction Block in Time-Domain

For a complete list of semifinalists, click here