Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS) Top Winners (2020-2024)
The following table summarizes the top 3 winners per year, including their research achievements (project descriptions), papers (if mentioned), mentors and affiliations (if available), and current achievements (as of September 2025). Data is compiled from reliable sources, focusing on factual high-level overviews.
| Year | Rank | Winner | Research Achievements | Papers | Mentor (Affiliation) | Current Achievements |
| 2024 | 1 | Achyuta Rajaram (Exeter, NH) | Improved automatic discovery of visual circuits in AI models to enhance transparency, fairness, and safety in computer vision. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; continues AI research. |
| 2024 | 2 | Thomas Cong (Ossining, NY) | Investigated metabolic variations in rapidly growing cancers, revealing gene expression differences in immune cancers for potential drug targeting. | None mentioned. | Nikolaus Schultz (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center). | Undergraduate student at Harvard; ongoing cancer research. |
| 2024 | 3 | Michelle Wei (San Jose, CA) | Developed faster algorithms for solving second-order cone programs, improving optimization in machine learning, transportation, and supply chains. | None mentioned. | MIT PRIMES program. | Undergraduate student at Stanford; also won ISEF Young Scientist Award in 2024. |
| 2023 | 1 | Neel Moudgal (Saline, MI) | Created a computer model to predict RNA structures for disease diagnosis and treatment. | First author on a peer-reviewed article on RNA prediction. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at University of Michigan; continues bioinformatics work. |
| 2023 | 2 | Emily Ocasio (Falls Church, VA) | Used AI and NLP to analyze media bias in homicide victim coverage based on demographics. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Georgetown University; focuses on social sciences and AI ethics. |
| 2023 | 3 | Natasha Kulviwat (Jericho, NY) | Identified claudin-5 as a biomarker for suicide pathogenesis in neurobiology. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard University; continued research leading to ISEF Moore Award in 2023. |
| 2022 | 1 | Christine Ye (Sammamish, WA) | Analyzed gravitational waves from neutron star-black hole collisions to refine neutron star mass estimates. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard; pursuing physics and astrophysics. |
| 2022 | 2 | Victor Cai (Orefield, PA) | Designed short-range radar for distance sensing to aid visually impaired individuals. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; focuses on engineering innovations. |
| 2022 | 3 | Amber Luo (Stony Brook, NY) | Developed RiboBayes tool to identify ribosome pause sites for protein synthesis insights. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; bioinformatics researcher. |
| 2021 | 1 | Yunseo Choi (Exeter, NH) | Explored matching algorithms for infinite pairs, applicable to organ matching and rotations. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard; mathematics major. |
| 2021 | 2 | Noah Getz (New York, NY) | Adjusted ML models for faster pharmaceutical compound identification. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; computer science focus. |
| 2021 | 3 | Eshani Jha (San Jose, CA) | Developed biochar filtration for removing contaminants from water. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at UC Berkeley; won Stockholm Junior Water Prize in 2021. |
| 2020 | 1 | Lillian Petersen (Los Alamos, NM) | Created tool for early crop harvest prediction using satellite data. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | PhD student at Stanford; genetics research. |
| 2020 | 2 | Jagdeep Bhatia (Green Brook, NJ) | Developed ML algorithms for interactive learning. | "Simple and fast algorithms for interactive machine learning with random counter-examples" (Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2021). | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; ML researcher. |
| 2020 | 3 | Brendan Crotty (Muskogee, OK) | Built hybrid gas burner reducing nitrogen dioxide emissions. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at University of Oklahoma; engineering focus. |
International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) Top Winners (2021-2024)
ISEF 2020 was cancelled due to COVID-19. Top awards include George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award, Young Scientist Awards, and Gordon E. Moore Award.
| Year | Award | Winner(s) | Research Achievements | Papers | Mentor (Affiliation) | Current Achievements |
| 2024 | Innovator Award | Grace Sun (Lexington, KY) | Novel doping for N-type organic electrochemical transistors in bioelectronics. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school senior; continues biomedical research. |
| 2024 | Young Scientist Award | Michelle Wei (San Jose, CA) | Faster solving of second-order cone programs for optimization. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | See STS entry; dual winner in 2024. |
| 2024 | Moore Award | Justin Huang & Victoria Ou (Woodlands, TX) | Ultrasonic acoustic filtration for microplastic removal from water. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school seniors; appeared on TV shows promoting research. |
| 2023 | Innovator Award | Kaitlyn Wang (San Jose, CA) | Discovered smallest ultra-short-period planet using GPU-parallelized phase folding. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Stanford; astronomy focus. |
| 2023 | Young Scientist Award | Pannathorn Siri et al. (Thailand) | Optimized green lacewing survivability for pest control. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school students; continued biology studies. |
| 2023 | Moore Award | Natasha Kulviwat (Jericho, NY) | Claudin-5 as biomarker for suicide pathogenesis. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | See STS entry; Harvard undergraduate. |
| 2022 | Innovator Award | Robert Sansone (Fort Pierce, FL) | Novel synchronous reluctance electric motor design. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; engineering innovator. |
| 2022 | Young Scientist Award | Rishab Jain (Portland, OR) | ICOR tool for synthetic DNA in vaccine manufacturing. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Stanford; biotech research. |
| 2022 | Moore Award | Chris Tidtijumreonpon et al. (Thailand) | BiDEx system for liver fluke detection using AI. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school students; public health focus. |
| 2021 | Innovator Award | Michelle Hua (Bloomfield Hills, MI) | Dilated silhouette CNN for human action recognition. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; AI researcher. |
| 2021 | Young Scientist Award | Catherine Kim (Jericho, NY) | Hierarchical classification for adverse drug reactions. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard; pharmacology focus. |
| 2021 | Moore Award | John Benedict Estrada (Fresno, CA) | AI drought-stress assessment model for plants. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at UC Berkeley; agrotech innovator. |
Davidson Fellows Scholarship Top Winners (2020-2024)
Top tier: Laureates ($50,000 scholarships). Limited details on mentors/papers in sources.
| Year | Winner | Research Achievements | Papers | Mentor (Affiliation) | Current Achievements |
| 2024 | Vidya Ambati (Charlottesville, VA) | Repurposing drugs for macular degeneration using computational models. | None mentioned. | Bradley Gelfand (University of Virginia). | High school senior; international webinar host on science. |
| 2024 | Yifan Ding (West Roxbury, MA) | Novel computational models for neuroscience and music integration. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school student; musician-scientist aspirant. |
| 2024 | Calvin Mathew (Davie, FL) | 3D-printed knee implants using biomaterials. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | High school senior; engineering focus. |
| 2023 | Lindsey Wang (Pepper Pike, OH) | Analyzed electronic health records for drug repurposing in Alzheimer's. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard; data science research. |
| 2023 | Edward Yu (Bellevue, WA) | Structure and density of mixed graphs in mathematics. | None mentioned. | MIT PRIMES program. | Undergraduate student at MIT; number theory researcher. |
| 2022 | Benjamin Choi (McLean, VA) | Mind-controlled prosthetics and AI innovations. | Multiple original papers published. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Harvard; robotics researcher. |
| 2022 | Vivien He (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA) | Cancer research on signaling pathways. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Stanford; biotech focus. |
| 2022 | Katherine Liu (Wellesley, MA) | Music composition and performance innovations. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Professional musician; composer. |
| 2021 | Meenakshi Ambati (Charlottesville, VA) | Drug repurposing for macular degeneration. | None mentioned. | Bradley Gelfand (University of Virginia). | Medical student; ongoing ophthalmology research. |
| 2021 | Apoorva Panidapu (San Jose, CA) | Number theory research on elliptic curves. | Several papers in Journal of Number Theory. | Jesse Thorner (University of Illinois). | Undergraduate student at Stanford; math researcher and speaker. |
| 2021 | Bala Vinaithirthan (Danville, CA) | AI for disease diagnosis. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at UC Berkeley; AI innovator. |
| 2020 | Ethan Levy (Miami, FL) | Nano-cardiac device for atherectomy. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Medical student; cardiology focus. |
| 2020 | Annie Ostojic (Munster, IN) | AI for cancer gene analysis. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at Purdue; bioinformatics. |
| 2020 | Jacob Yasonik (Mequon, WI) | De novo drug design with neural networks. | None mentioned. | Not specified. | Undergraduate student at MIT; ML in pharma. |
