Vancouver teen wins $75,000, top prize at world’s biggest high school science fair

A Canadian teen took home the top prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh on Friday.

Vancouver’s Raymond Wang, 17, won the Gordon E. Moore Award and $75,000 (USD) at the world’s biggest high school science fair for an invention that would improve air quality and decrease the spread of germs in airplane cabins.

“It’s truly amazing,” the Grade-11 student said after winning the award. “After doing many national fairs, I’ve always wanted to be here. Not only that, but to be recognized as having one of the top projects is truly mind-blowing.”

“It’s literally the happiest day of my life,” he told the Washington Post.

Wang’s air intake system improves “the availability of fresh air in the cabin by more than 190% while reducing pathogen inhalation concentrations by up to 55 times compared to conventional designs,“ the fair organizers said in a news release.

"Wang’s proposed modifications can be easily and economically incorporated into existing aircraft, saving countless lives in the event of a future pandemic.”

Wang told the Canadian Press that he was inspired to look into epidemics after the Ebola outbreak and eventually started researching diseases spread through the air, like H1N1 and SARS.

“I started to look into, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?’ I came across very limited research in terms of previous work to model air flow alone, just in cabins, much less trying to find any solutions to the problem,” he said.

He set about designing the first-ever high-resolution simulation of airflow inside commercial aircraft cabins — and found a way to redirect the air to significantly reduce pathogen inhalation and increase fresh-air inhalation, thanks to “personalized ventilation zones” which create walls of air around each passenger.

“In the future, (this will) curb disease spread no matter where people are sitting in the cabin. So we can really effectively reduce the risk of future epidemics,” Wang told the Canadian Press.

In the video below, Wang simulated the airflow in a “traditional cabin”:

[video 1]

In this video, the airflow has been modified with Wang’s invention:

[video 2]

Wang has already filed a patent for his design and plans to use his prize money to further his research. He believes his invention could be installed in a plane overnight for the cost of an average airline ticket.

Wang, who launched this project on the side, not as part of a school assignment — and taught himself computational fluid dynamics in the process — plans to study engineering and business in college.

“It’s one thing to be able to come up with these great ideas, but another thing to be able to promote them to the entire world,” he told the Washington Post.

Wang wasn’t the only Canadian student to be awarded a significant prize at the prestigious science fair. Sixteen-year-old Nicole Sabina Ticea of Vancouver received a Young Scientist Award — and a $50,000 USD scholarship — for her invention: an inexpensive HIV-diagnosing device that could be used in areas where resources are limited.