For the third and final year, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine hosted the Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair, although this year was a little different. Due to COVID-19, the fair was held virtually with high school students from across the state submitting their projects online. Judging took place virtually with more than 100 volunteer judges evaluating 209 entries in 16 categories such as microbiology and engineering and robotics.

  • The grand prize was awarded to Neil Suri from Oakton High School for his project titled, “FireWatch: A low-cost wildfire monitoring system for high-resolution fire localization using data sparsity and feature matching.” 
  • Second place went to Eleanor Sigrest from the Governor’s School at Innovation Park for her entry in the Physics category.  
  • Third place went to Meenakshi Ambati from Albemarle High School for their entry in Biomedical Engineering and Translation Medicine.

See a list of all the winners, including category and special awards.