Gallery: The Genius Kids Behind Obama's Favorite Science Projects
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Taliya Carter, 17 | Joshua Pigford, 21 | Derrick Bell, 21 | PROJECT: EVX 818 biodiesel car | LOCATION: West Philadelphia, PA | For Taliya Carter, Joshua Pigford, and Derrick Bell, dedicating their nights and weekends to making the [EVX 818](http://www.evxteam.org/projects/factory-five-818) was about more than building a biodiesel race car—they wanted to prove just what students from West Philadelphia are capable of. “A lot of people think that in the area we grow up in, you won’t get good opportunities,” Pigford says. “But we do. You just have to take advantage of them.” Their school principal, Simon Hauger, raced the final product, a Subaru WRX frame mashed up with a Volkswagen Jetta engine, at the 2014 Green Grand Prix in Watkins Glen, New York, and won. The vehicle goes up to 150 mph, gets 100 miles per gallon, and runs on fuel the students refined from grease. Doughnut grease, that is—donated by Federal Donuts.
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Kimberly Yeung, 9 | Rebecca Yeung, 11 | PROJECT: Loki Lego Launcher | LOCATION: Seattle, WA | The greatest moment in the history of the Yeungstuff Space Program—a DIY rocket shop run by Kimberly and Rebecca Yeung out of their parents’ garage—came when the sisters analyzed the results of the maiden voyage of their [Loki Lego Launcher.](https://youtu.be/QCP5jZXoOhI) The craft, a weather balloon anchored to a frame of aluminum archery arrows, had fallen back to earth earlier that day, and the girls traced it to a field and retrieved it. When they reviewed the data on their dad’s laptop, “we both screamed,” Kimberly says. The launcher showed a max altitude of 78,000 feet, well into the stratosphere. But the video was the best part: A GoPro on board had captured the craft’s two passengers—a Lego R2-D2 and a cardboard cutout of their deceased cat, Loki—against the dark backdrop of space.
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Hannah Herbst, 16 | PROJECT: Beacon hydroelectric generator | LOCATION: Boca Raton, FL | Hannah Herbst was not thrilled when her parents signed her up for engineering camp, and even less so when she learned she was the only girl on the roster. But while there, she thought of her Ethiopian pen pal, Ruth, who lived in a community with little access to electricity. So Herbst devised a plan for a generator powered by the ocean’s current. She started working on the project, called Beacon, after camp ended, sourcing parts from her school’s maker garage. “Tons of people told me I couldn’t do it,” Herbst says, but she was determined. The winner of the 2015 Discovery 3M Young Scientist Challenge, she’s now working on a third iteration of the Beacon. She plans to make it open source so students all over the world can learn from it—especially young female engineers.
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Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, 18 | PROJECT: Undersea cement mixture | LOCATION: Elmont, NY | For her school’s science research program, Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna first worked on biology projects—just like everyone else. “They were very conventional,” she says. “There was no point in taking them to competitions.” So she pivoted to the least biological thing she could think of: cement. Troubled by the devastation caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Uwamanzu-Nna wanted to develop a cement slurry that would result in more stable undersea oil wells. She spent a summer at Columbia testing different mixtures and simulating ocean conditions until she found a winning formula. Not only was Uwamanzu-Nna named a finalist in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, she was the only student in the country accepted to all eight Ivy League schools.
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Olivia Hallisey, 18 | PROJECT: Ebola Assay Card | LOCATION: Greenwich, CT | The test for Ebola is expensive and must be kept cold—not ideal for a disease that often strikes in poor, remote places. Olivia Hallisey wanted to make something better, but first she needed to get her hands on the existing test kit. “No one wanted to give one to a high school student,” she says. Eventually, a German distributor relented, and she got to work. Hallisey knew from her research that a solution derived from silkworm cocoons had temperature-stabilizing properties, so she bought some cocoons from Etsy (they come cheap) and cooked and processed them in her school’s science lab. “It’s really gross,” Hallisey says. But worth it. Her Google Science Fair–winning [Ebola Assay Card](https://youtu.be/AkdTdG_gR-8) (shown) costs $5 to make and travels well—no refrigeration required.
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Payton Kaar, 21 | Kiona Elliott, 21 | PROJECT: Bike-powered water sanitation station | LOCATION: Oakland Park, FL | After hearing about the unsanitary conditions in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Kiona Elliott, Payton Kaar, and a few of their friends at Northeast High School were shocked to discover just how many people around the world lack access to clean water. “It’s so easy for us to walk to the kitchen, get a drink, and not have to worry about it killing us,” Elliott says. The team received a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT grant, which they used to buy parts for building a water-sanitation station. A year later, they completed a device that harnesses the kinetic energy of a bike wheel to push water through a fine mesh screen and two sets of disinfecting filters. The whole system is small enough to fit in a pizza box—all that users have to provide is the bike.
