Students From Flint and Ann Arbor Get Major ISEF Awards

15 May 2000

Students From Flint and Ann Arbor Get Major ISEF Awards

    DETROIT--May 12, 2000--An Ann Arbor high school student received a first-place award and a Flint student took second- and third-place honors today at the Government and Industry Awards ceremonies for this year's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair taking place at Cobo Center, May 7-12.
    Robert C. Vogt IV, 15, a senior at Ann Arbor-Huron High School, received a first-place award and $150 from the Patent and Trademark Office of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Patent and Trademark Office Society for a computer-science project. Titled "Microstructure of the Discrete Fourier Transform: Phase II," his research uses a unique technique to significantly improve medical images to facilitate the diagnosis of diseases and illness.
    Vogt's project earlier won a third-place award from the IEEE Computer Society and an Honorable Mention from the Association of Computing Machinery at Intel's Special Awards and College Scholarship Ceremony on Thursday night (May 11).
    George Hwang, 15, a sophomore at Carman-Ainsworth High School in Flint, received two awards at Government and Industry Awards ceremonies. His environmental science project "Can Acoustical Methods Be Used to Detect and Characterize Corrosion?" was given a second-place award along with $300 and a matching $300 grant to his high school by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation.
    Hwang's research study also earned $1,000 and a third-place award plaque from the U.S. Coast Guard. On Thursday, the Flint student's project received an Honorable Mention from the Acoustical Society of America.
    The two Michigan students are among 1,223 students from the United States and 42 other countries competing for scholarships, grants and awards at ISEF 2000. One additional awards program is scheduled - a Grand Award Ceremony at 1 p.m., on Friday (May 12) in Detroit's Cobo Arena.
    More than 1,100 judges participated in this year's ISEF competition, including engineers, doctors, chemists and other scientists with doctoral degrees or at least six years of experience in their fields. Projects were entered in 14 categories: Behavioral and Social Sciences, Biochemistry, Botany, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth and Space Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Science, Gerontology, Mathematics, Medicine and Health, Microbiology, Physics and Zoology.