Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication

Society for Science is proud to celebrate its Centennial through a $10,000 award honoring Peggy Scripps who was a science journalist who served as a writer and editor of Science Newsletter for many years. This award will be given to the finalist that is best able to communicate their project to the lay public, explaining both the science and its potential impact on society.

The award will be used by the winner to cover post-secondary educational expenses.

Learn more about the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair and about the awards presented at ISEF.

Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication 2021-2022

2022

Anika Puri, 17, of Chappaqua, New York, received $10,000 for her low-cost machine learning software that can analyze night-time infrared videos taken by a drone flown over the African wilderness to spot elephant poachers in real time. In tests, her $300 system worked with 91% accuracy, a fourfold improvement over current systems, without needing high-resolution thermal cameras that can cost up to $10,000.

EAEV066 — ElSa: A Novel Real-Time Wildlife Poacher Detection Solution Leveraging Machine Learning-Driven Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Nighttime UAV Thermal Infrared Videos

Anika Puri, Horace Greeley High School, NY, United States of America

2021

Franklin Wang, 17, of Palo Alto, California received $10,000 for his project engineering machine learning to analyze public telescope data. Through his research, he discovered six never-before-seen near-Earth asteroids. His approach can be applied to any observatory to substantially improve the detection of and search speed for fast moving asteroids (FMAs.)

PHYS050 — The Fast and Inconspicuous: New Near Earth Asteroids Discovered Using Deep Learning and Synthetic Data Are Fainter and Move Faster than Those Previously Discovered

Franklin Wang, Palo Alto Senior High School, CA, United States of America