Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Hall was the site of the 2020 Northern Indiana Regional Science and Engineering Fair (NIRSEF) on Saturday, February 29. Students in grades 3-12 from area schools in Elkhart, Fulton, Marshall, and St. Joseph Counties, who were selected by the judges at their local school fairs, presented their projects at NIRSEF with the goal of advancing to the State Fair on March 28.
Members of ND Energy’s Student Energy Board (SEB) evaluated the energy-related projects to determine special prize winners for both junior and senior division participants.
While several senior projects caught the attention of the judges, Mufei Li from Culver Academies and her experiment, “Using Eggshells and Turkey Bones as Catalysts to Produce Biodiesel Through Transesterification,” stood out above the rest. Not only did Mufei conduct a thorough experiment and explain it well to the judges, she also considered future research ideas and applications related to the project.
The junior division also featured multiple prize-worthy projects and resulted in a tie. The judges awarded Kate O'Shaughnessy (St. Joseph Catholic School, South Bend) for her project titled, “Magnetizing Oil Spills.” Kate used ferrofluid and a neodymium magnet to model a method she believes will be the future of cleaning small oil spills.
The other junior division winner was Will Michalski (St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School, Elkhart) and his project, “A Functional Homemade Radon Detector.” The judges were impressed with Will's efforts to create an ionization chamber and radon daughter collector, and by his problem-solving skills throughout the project.
SEB members serving as judges were Tara Senn, Emma Kerr, Emily Black, Ann Fink, Melanie Perez, Cameron Taylor, Caitlin Reed, Diane Kim, Mackenzie Winton, Kelly Moran, Breanna Belz, and Hannah Collins.