Three Blair Magnet Students Named National Science Talent Finalists

Three Montgomery Blair High School seniors were named finalists in the 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search.

Steven Qu, Grace Cai, Daniel Schäffer,
Allison Borton, Naveen Durvasula, Laura Cui, Kevin Qian, Daniel Zhu
Photo | Blair Magnet Foundation

The Regeneron Science Talent Search competition is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition, founded and produced by the Society for Science & the Public, and sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

On January 9, 300 scholars were named, selected from 1,964 applications, which were received from 601 high schools in 48 states, two U.S. territories and eligible students living in seven other countries. Eight students from Blair were selected as scholars.

On January 23, forty of the 300 scholars were named Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists. Finalists will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., from March 7-13, when they will compete for more than $1.8 million in awards provided by Regeneron.

The three Blair finalists, Grace Cai, Kevin Qian, and Daniel Schäffer, will win an award of at least $25,000. The 40 finalists nationwide will have an opportunity to win awards up to $250,000 in May in Washington, DC. The three students were chosen based on the senior research projects they completed as part of the Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program at Blair. Their names and projects are:

• Grace Cai, An Urgency Dependent Quorum Sensing Algorithm for N-Site Selection in Autonomous Swarms
• Kevin Qian, Heisenberg-Scaling Measurement Protocol for Analytic Functions with Quantum Sensor Networks
• Daniel Schäffer, Evolutionary Origins of Animal ER Calcium Signaling and a Proposed Role for the Channelopathy Protein Wolframin

Eight Blair students were named Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholars. They each won a $2,000 award, and Montgomery Blair High School will be awarded $2,000 for each of the eight students, totaling $16,000. The names and projects of the eight scholars are:

• Allison Borton, Developing a Reconfigurable E-Shaped Microstrip Patch Antenna Array
• Laura Cui, Near-Threshold Doubly Heavy Tetraquark States
• Grace Cai, An Urgency Dependent Quorum Sensing Algorithm for N-Site Selection in Autonomous Swarms
• Naveen Durvasula, A Bayesian Optimization Approach to Estimating Expected Match Time and Organ Quality in Kidney Exchange
• Kevin Qian, Heisenberg-Scaling Measurement Protocol for Analytic Functions with Quantum Sensor Networks
• Steven Qu, Maximizing Social Leverage in Linear Threshold Influence Networks
• Daniel Schäffer, Evolutionary Origins of Animal ER Calcium Signaling and a Proposed Role for the Channelopathy Protein Wolframin
• Daniel Zhu, On the Okounkov-Olshanski Formula for the Number of Tableaux of Skew Shapes

Blair is one of two schools in the nation to have three finalists in the competition. The other school is Harker School in San Jose, Calif.

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