Fun facts: Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge Top 300 - Society for Science Skip to content

Fun facts: Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge Top 300

By Kevin Easterly

Cookies baking, a swimmer diving, books, and dice -- images representing interests and hobbies of the top 300
Photos by Pam Menegakis, Brian Matangelo, Dan Horgan and Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

The Top 300 Junior Innovators in the 2024 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge are an exceptional and diverse group of student researchers. Chosen from nearly 2,000 applicants, who all ranked in the top 10% of their local science fairs, these standout STEM innovators come from 36 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. You can meet the full list of the Top 300 Junior Innovators by following this link, or continue reading to discover just a few of the reasons that make them such a remarkable group.

Here are some fun facts about this year’s Top 300 Junior Innovators:

  • The Junior Innovators have a wide range of career interests, including medicine, computer science, astrophysics, animal training, audiology, teaching, dentistry, climatology and much more!
  • The most popular career path among the top 300 is to be an engineer—a whopping 100 Junior Innovators hope to work as engineers in fields such as biomedical, environmental, and mechanical engineering.
  • With no shortage of extracurricular interests, some of the Junior Innovators’ favorite hobbies are reading, solving Rubik’s cubes, participating in drama club, baking, speech and debate, creating art, cheerleading, drawing, puzzling, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and competing in Science Olympiad. More than half attend public schools.
  • The Junior Innovators are an athletic group, participating in 18 different sports. The most popular sport among the Top 300 is swimming (112), followed by tennis (89) and soccer (78)
  • The Junior Innovators can have some serious musical skills, playing a total of 17 different musical instruments. The most popular instruments played are piano (154), violin (54) and guitar (28). Another 58 sing in a choir!
  • Service-oriented, the Top 300 engage in a diverse range of volunteer activities, including tutoring, assisting with church services, volunteering at homeless shelters and food pantries, working on service projects with Scouts, and organizing beach clean ups.
  • A multilingual group, the Top 300 Junior Innovators speak a total of 19 languages other than English

Congratulations to all of the Thermo Fisher JIC Top 300 Junior Innovators!

Stay tuned for the announcement of the Top 30 finalists on Wednesday, September 18. Follow the Society on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to learn more about this year’s Junior Innovators.

Kevin Easterly