Project Title: The Complete Set of Noble Polyhedra

Connor Hill, 17, of State College, Pennsylvania won first place and $250,000 for discovering a way to identify all the possible “noble polyhedra,” highly symmetric shapes with flat sides and straight edges. He wrote a computer program to do the computations and proved there are two infinite families of noble polyhedra, as well as 146 isolated examples.

• Photos of Connor
• Winner Video
• Bio & Project page
• B-Roll

Project Title: RetinaMind: Convergent In Silico and In Vitro Evidence for the Retina as a Novel Biomarker in the Early Diagnosis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Second place and $175,000 went to Edward Kang, 17, of Hackensack, New Jersey for using retinal images to train AI models on subtle patterns linked to autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to create a screening tool called RetinaMind. He also created retinal cell models to study gene changes that may help explain why these differences occur.

• Photos of Edward
• Winner Video
• Bio & Project page
• B-Roll

Project Title: Assessing Marine Bivalves as Novel Invertebrate Models for Targeting Anti-Apoptotic BCL-2 Family Proteins in Blood Cancer: The In Vivo Effects of Ursolic Acid and Gossypol Acetic Acid on Tumor Cells in Mercenaria mercenaria

Third place and $150,000 went to Iris Shen, 17, of The Woodlands, Texas, for testing a potential cancer drug in clams to see if they could serve as an animal model for blood cancer drug discovery. In the clams, the drug had a similar effect to what researchers observe in human cells. She also tested a mix of other potential cancer drugs, which slowed the clams’ tumor growth.

• Photos of Iris
• Winner Video
• Bio & Project page
• B-Roll

Project Title: The Dual Canonical Basis in the Spin Representation via the Temperley-Lieb Algebra

Rachel Chen, 18, of Los Angeles, California for developing a concrete, visual way to describe systems of many quantum particles using Temperley-Lieb diagrams, expanding on a 1997 finding. Rachel illustrated how a magnetic field influences the entire quantum system using these simple point-and-line diagrams.

• Photos of Rachel
• Bio & Project page
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Project Title: A Unified Protein Embedding Model With Local and Global Structural Sensitivity

Jerry Xu, 17, of Lexington, Massachusetts for building an AI program that compresses the features of protein molecules into strings of numbers. He showed that his model enabled a more efficient comparison of protein structure without the loss of important features. This could speed up genetic research and drug discovery.

• Photos of Jerry
• Bio & Project page
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Project Title: Photobiomodulation on In Vivo and In Vitro Wound Models Under Simulated Microgravity for Future Space Travel

Leanne Fan, 18, of San Diego, California for building a device to simulate microgravity in order to study how wounds heal in space. With the device, she tested red light on injured flatworms and found that it sped up tissue regeneration by 95.2%. She also found that red light treatment speeds up wound repair in human models in normal gravity.

• Photos of Leanne
• Bio & Project page
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Project Title: A Novel In Vitro Cell Culture Model for Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Claire Jiang, 18, of Wyckoff, New Jersey for developing a cellular model of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). She treated cells used to study rheumatoid arthritis with bone morphogenetic protein 4, a protein linked to JIA joint damage. Her experiments showed they acted like JIA cells in their growth and gene expression.

• Photos of Claire
• Bio & Project page
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Project Title: Repurposing Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Drugs To Treat Vascular Alzheimer’s Dementia: A Safe, Effective and Accessible Approach to Alzheimer’s Treatment

Leon Wang, 17, of Stamford, Connecticut, for finding two FDA-approved drugs that may also be effective against Alzheimer’s disease. Both drugs reduce the activity of a cellular signaling pathway linked to an Alzheimer’s gene. In lab-grown brain cells, the drugs reduced signs of damage due to the pathway.

• Photos of Leon
• Bio & Project page
• B-Roll

Project Title: An Unrestricted Notion of the Finite Factorization Property

Jonathan Du, 18, of Mountain View, California for investigating the unrestricted finite factorization property. Factorization breaks down mathematical objects into simpler parts. Jonathan’s work explores complicated algebraic systems where some elements have several factorizations, and others do not factor at all.

• Photos of Jonathan
• Bio & Project page
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Project Title: Learning Broken Symmetries With Approximate Invariance: A Novel Dual-Subnetwork Approach to Classifying Particle Collision Events

Seth Nabat, 18, of Winnetka, California for building a machine learning program to quickly and accurately track particle collisions without sacrificing accuracy by favoring symmetry. Seth’s program uses an unconstrained network to catch errors, and another network to find patterns in them.

• Photos of Seth
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Colin Jie Chu, 18, of Palo Alto, California was named the Seaborg Award winner and selected to speak on behalf of the Regeneron Science Talent Search Class of 2026. The 40 finalists chose Colin as the person who best exemplifies their class and the legacy of nuclear chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 and served on the Society’s Board of Trustees for 30 years.

• Photos of Colin
• Bio & Project page
• Seaborg Speech