Two local Toronto students are among the top winners at this year’s 2023 Canada-Wide Science Fair (CWSF) that took place in Edmonton this week.
On Thursday, the fair presented the Best Project Awards to projects focussed on alternative cancer treatments and planetary defense. More than $1.6 million in scholarships and awards were given during the CWSF ceremony at Edmonton Convention Centre. The winners were carefully selected by a panel of over 238 judges.
Hailing from Toronto is Arushi Nath from Ecole Secondaire Toronto Ouest. She received the Best Project Award in the category of Innovation for her project, “Developing algorithms to determine asteroid’s physical properties and success of deflection missions”.
This isn’t the Toronto native’s first time winning in this category as well. Nath also won best project award at last year’s CWSF and became the first back-to-back best project award winner since 1989 to 1990.
The second student is Richmond Hill’s Noah Bryan from Bayview Secondary School who received a platinum award in the discovery category for their project titled “The Phage Takes Centre Stage for Water Quality Testing!”
Nearly 900 people were in attendance at the CWSF awards gala to celebrate the curiosity and brilliance of Canadian students and witness the fair’s top winners.
A total of 220 students shared the million dollar plus prizes, scholarships, and awards. In addition to Nath, the top award in Discovery and Innovation also went to Elizabeth Chen of Edmonton for a project on alternative cancer treatments.
“Canadian students are as inquisitive and creative as ever,” Executive Director at Youth Science Canada Reni Barlow said in a media release Friday.
“Getting back together in person to view these projects and meet the students was an exhilarating experience. Congratulations to all the finalists and those who supported them along their journey of exploration. This year’s event demonstrates yet again the important role that youth play in developing innovative knowledge and solutions that will help future generations.”
TOP WINNERS OF 2023 CANADA-WIDE SCIENCE FAIR
Best Project Awards
Best Project: Discovery
Elizabeth Chen from Edmonton, Alberta, for Optimization of CAR-T Cell Therapy using RNA-Sequencing Analysis for Biomarker Identification.
Best Project: Innovation
Arushi Nath from Toronto, Ontario, for Developing algorithms to determine asteroid’s physical properties and success of deflection missions.
Platinum Awards – Discovery
Best Junior (grade 7/8)
Andrei Marti from Saanichton, British Columbia, for Sweet Scores.
Best Intermediate (grade 9/10)
Noah Bryan from Richmond Hill, Ontario, for The Phage Takes Centre Stage for Water Quality Testing!
Platinum Awards – Innovation
Best Intermediate (grade 9/10)
Yurui Qin from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, for A Novel Approach to Using Artificial Intelligence to Aid the Hearing Impaired.
Best Senior (grade 11/12/Cégep)
Moulik Budhiraja and Katelyn Wu from Waterloo, Ontario, for Nail Braille: A Novel Approach Towards Braille Education.
In the first two days of public viewing, approximately 396 student finalists showcased a total of 340 projects at the fair which has attracted more than 7,000 visitors to the Edmonton Convention Centre and more than 10,000 online visitors.
The Canada-Wide Science Fair and STEM Expo continues in person today at the Edmonton Convention Centre until 2:30 p.m. MDT this afternoon.
The student projects will remain online for the public to view.
