Thomas Aldous, 14, Pittsburgh, PA, won the $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize, for his project designing a robotic hand as well as his leadership, collaboration and critical thinking skills. The prize is a gift of Dr. Henry Samueli, Chairman of the Board, Broadcom Inc., and Chair of the Broadcom Foundation and his wife, Dr. Susan Samueli, President of the Samueli Foundation.

Thomas’s design for a remote-controlled robotic hand connects fingers on a glove to threads that link to spools with electronic devices. A control board uses data from the devices to prepare and send instructions to the hand, which then mimics the glove-wearer’s movements.

• Photos of Thomas
• Project Video
• Winner Video

Rory Hu, 12, San Jose, CA, won the $10,000 DoD STEM Talent Award for demonstrating excellence in science, technology, engineering or math, along with the leadership and technical skills necessary to excel in the 21^st Century STEM workforce and build a better community for tomorrow.

Rory’s tests with honey bees suggest that feeding them tea polyphenols and caffeine could boost their ability to learn and remember. She also showed that the chemicals might repair some of the harm done by pesticides, which could help dwindling honey bee populations.

• Photos of Rory
• Winner Video

Jeanelle Dao, 13, San Jose, CA, won the $10,000 Lemelson Award for Invention, awarded by The Lemelson Foundation to a young inventor who creates a promising solution to a real-world problem.

Jeanelle invented a foot-controlled welcome mat that wirelessly unlocks a door when someone presses numbers in the correct order. The device could help people with arthritis and other hand problems become more self-sufficient.

• Photos of Jeanelle
• Winner Video

Elizabeth Shen, 14, Cary, NC, won the $10,000 Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation, an honor made possible by Samueli’s generous donation of his 2012 Marconi Society Prize Award. The finalist demonstrates both vision and promise as an innovator, in the spirit of radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi.

Elizabeth drew inspiration from the way many flower petals grow to design a system for managing the wear on a computer’s memory. Her system reduced the average number of times cells were accessed, compared to other options.

• Photos of Elizabeth
• Winner Video

Mina Fedor, 14, Berkeley, CA, won the $10,000 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Advancement, which recognizes the student whose work and performance shows the most promise in health-related fields and demonstrates an understanding of the many social factors that affect the health of communities.

Mina used electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure a certain type of brain activity as people did active and passive learning tasks. “Understanding how the brain processes memory brings us closer to treating memory-related disorders,” she says.

• Photos of Mina
• Winner Video

Ankit Biswas, 14, Charlotte, NC, used an optimization tool called the simplex algorithm to try to rein in rockets’ greenhouse gas emissions. His work suggests the best mix going forward would be 41 petroleum-fueled rockets and 11 cryogenic-fueled rockets per year, with an average payload of 29 metric tons.

• Photos of Ankit
• Winner Video