6 Outstanding Taiwanese Students Win Prizes at the 2017 Intel International Science & Engineering Fair

6 Outstanding Taiwanese Students Win Prizes at the 2017 Intel International Science & Engineering Fair

Twelve high school students from Taiwan took part in the 2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Los Angeles. Dr. Lin Chu-Li, the dean of the National Taiwan Science Education Center (NTSEC) led a delegation of 12 competing students from: the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University, Chung Shan Industrial & Commercial School, National Tainan Girls' Senior High School, Taipei American School, Taipei First Girls' Senior High School, and Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. Another student from Tzu Chi Senior High School Affiliated with Tzu Chi University was selected at the 56th National Junior High School and Elementary School Science Fair in Taiwan to accompany them as an observer. They competed with more than 1,700 students from 79 countries who created a total of 1,300 works, including nine created by these outstanding students from Taiwan.
These twelve outstanding students were selected during the Taiwan International Science Fair this February. Dr. Chu Nan-Shyan, the Director-General of the National Taiwan Science Education Center, said, “These students kept learning hard and improving their skills before they went abroad and finally forged ahead on the international stage. They made a lot of effort to learn research methods, scientific protocols, English expressions, and international etiquette, with professional counseling and guidance from Dr. Lin Jung-Ya a professor at National Taiwan University and other experienced professors.”
Six of the students won five awards at ISEL:
1) Embedded Systems Category Third Award of $1,000: “Paper Circuit Printer and Its Applications” — won by Yeh Chia-Yu from Chung Shan Industrial & Commercial School
2) Mathematics Category Third Award of $1,000: “Which Maps Are 4-list Colorable?” — won by Lin Juei-Yin from Taipei First Girls' High School
3) Chemistry Category Third Award of $1,000: High Efficiency TADF-based Transparent OLEDs — won by Wu Yun-Ching and Chen Yi-Chen, from Taipei First Girls' High School
4) Biomedical and Health Science Category Fourth Award of $500: “Imbalanced Folate Status Promotes Metabolic Stress, Cancer Stem Cell Phenotype, and Proteomic Signatures of Human Breast Cancer Cells” — won by Angel Huang from Taipei American School
5) American Mathematical Society Third Award of $500: “Chance or Coincidence - Counting 3-Arithmetic Progression in Block-Generated Thue-Morse String” — won by Chuang Yuan-Jung from National Tainan Girls' Senior High School
Among the six winners, Yeh Chia-Yu’s performance is especially praiseworthy. He is from a vocational school in Taiwan, rather than from a top notch public school like the other students participating in the fair. Before the international fair, his English proficiency was not very strong and he could only write a short speech script, but following the professors’ guidance and intensive instruction, during the fair he was able to answer the reviewers’ questions fluently and provide them with more details about his work. His work“Paper Circuit Printer and Its Applications” is an innovative printing method conducting electricity on paper to print pictures.
The Education Division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles attended the Intel ISEF Grand Awards Ceremony and extended messages of congratulations to these winners on May 19, on behalf of the Minister of Education in Taiwan. The students who won a Grand Award will also receive Ministry of Education scholarship prizes of 50,000 NTD and be offered admission to top universities in Taiwan.
The twelve competing students in the 2017 Intel ISEF Fair were sponsored by Intel Corporation, K.T. Li Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, YSED, and Image Model Co. Ltd. and the observer student was sponsored by Broadcom Foundation.
In order to commemorate K.T. Li’s contribution to technology development in Taiwan and his support for Taiwan’s science education, a K.T. Li Special Award was presented to two of the other foreign students participating in this fair: Sulekh Frederic Fernando-Peiris from Mount Vernon High School in the US, and Elias Waagaard, from Bromangymnasiet school in Sweden. They have been invited to participate in the 2018 Taiwan International Science Fair.

Photo:2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)