The 2021 Broadcom MASTERS ventured outdoors during this year’s Smithsonian Environmental Research Center challenge. The finalists set up trail cameras, collected data and learned about biodiversity in their communities.

Broadcom Foundation and Society for Science today announced that Akilan Sankaran, 14, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, won the coveted $25,000 Samueli Foundation Prize, the top award in the Broadcom MASTERS®, the nation’s premier science and engineering competition for middle school students. Akilan is the first student with a math project in the competition’s 11-year history to take home the Samueli Foundation Prize.

Two Texas middle school students were inspired to find a way to harness methane gas released from compost and turn it into energy.

According to the American Bird Conservancy, the best estimates of the number of birds killed by wind turbines in the U.S. each year are based on three significant studies published in 2013 and 2014. Because each study was unique in its methods, estimated results vary from an average of 234,000 to 573,000 bird deaths per year. These bird deaths are caused by collisions with wind turbines and other structures such as power lines as well as by the disturbance and displacement of birds when wind facilities are built.