Student Winners of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

This is Steve Ember with the VOA Special English EDUCATION REPORT.

High school students from more than forty countries gathered last week in the American Northwest. They took part in the two-thousand-four Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. They competed for more than three-million dollars in awards and money for college.

We told you last week about five high school teachers honored for their excellence in teaching mathematics and science. They won money and a trip to the science and engineering fair held last week in Portland, Oregon. Now, meet a few of the students honored for the projects they presented there.

The top winners are from the United States, Germany and China. They were named Intel Young Scientists. Each received a high performance computer and fifty-thousand dollars for college.

One of the winners is seventeen-year-old Sarah Rose Langberg of Fort Myers, Florida. She won a top prize for her project in Earth and space sciences. She investigated the southern Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean. This is one of the most active volcanic areas on Earth. She studied video images from the ocean floor and did other research in an effort to explain details of this area.

Eighteen-year-old Uwe Treske of Grafenhainichen Germany, won for his physics project. He used common materials to develop a low-cost version of a powerful device called a scanning tunneling microscope.

The third top winner is nineteen-year-old Zhu Yuanchen of Shanghai. His computer science project involved computer graphics. He developed a way to produce high-quality images with clearer detail in less time.

More than one-thousand-three-hundred students competed in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Intel calls it "the world's largest pre-college celebration of science." The computer technology company in the United States has held the fair since nineteen-ninety-seven. But a non-profit organization called Science Service has administered the event for the past fifty-five years.

You can learn more information about Science Service and the fair through the Internet. The Web site is sciserv.org. Again, the address is sciserv.org.

This VOA Special English EDUCATION REPORT was written by Nancy Steinbach. This is Steve Ember.