Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication

Cory Seelenfreund, New Rochelle High School, NY, United States of America

Cory Seelenfreund, 17,听of听New Rochelle, New York, received the听$10,000 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication听for his study of the relevance of memory in the Prisoner鈥檚 Dilemma. Prisoner鈥檚 Dilemma is a classic game theory problem where two people accused of a crime decide whether to snitch or stay silent. Cory created computer simulations and mathematical models to test how selfishness and memory affect the game. Memory of just one game often improved results, but players with better memory won in more complex scenarios. He found the best outcomes when players had a variety of self-interested and altruistic behaviors. These findings can help design smarter AI bots and other programs that need to 鈥済et along鈥� with humans.

Maddux Springer, Iolani School, HI, United States of America

Maddux Alexander Springer, 18, of Honolulu, Hawaii, received the Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication of $10,000 for his research into fibropapillomatosis (FP), a disease that is the primary cause of death in green sea turtles. Some turtles he studied in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, were stricken with a disease that causes internal and external tumors that inhibit their everyday lives. After analyzing the turtles鈥� diet of green algae, Maddux concluded that this disease, wastewater, invasive algae and the amino acid arginine all pose a grave risk to these endangered sea creatures.听

Eugene Chen, Shanghai High School International Division, China

Eugene Chen, 16, of Shanghai, China, received $10,000 for his inexpensive energy-saving device that recycles the condensation produced by air conditioners to improve their energy efficiency. His device directs the cooling fan鈥檚 airflow to spray the air conditioner鈥檚 condensation at its own condenser, lowering its temperature and thus reducing power consumption and improving its energy efficiency. Eugene believes his easy-to-install device can reduce the amount of electricity used by air conditioners by more than 10%.

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

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.

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

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.)