Forty-four students from Canterbury School will compete at the Edison Regional Science Fair at Harbourside Event Center on Jan. 30. Winners from the regional competition move on to the state and international levels.
There are divisions for middle and high school students with a number of categories including animal science, earth science, environmental management, microbiology and physics. There also is a team project where two or more students work together.
Kathy Edwards, director of public relations at Canterbury, said students have been preparing for the competition anywhere from three years to four months.
“One student is in his third year, some of the upper school students started preparing over the summer,” she said. “They go all over and work with research scientists.”
Some students spent their summer studying with professors and researchers at the University of Florida or University of South Florida, she said.
“Others just started preparing during the school year,” said Edwards.
David Shepard, a senior at Canterbury School, has worked on his project for the last three years. He is developing drought resistant genes to be able to grow plants in an arid environment.
Sarah-Marie Hopf and Harry Drimoussis are two Cape Coral residents who will represent the school at the Harbourside competition.
Hopf, a senior, is trying to reduce the risk of a respiratory virus that infects hundreds of thousands of children across the world, and Drimoussis, an eighth-grader, studied the affect of salinity on micro-organism growth.
Other projects include studying the affect of climate change on coral reefs, how exercise affects the brain, the affect of sunscreen on wounds and the affects of oil on water.
Students who perform well next month will move on to the state competition at Lakeland. Later, Intel’s International Science and Engineer Fair will be held May 10-15 in Reno, Nev.
“Canterbury has had quite a few overall winners at the science fair,” said Edwards. “According to one of the ISEF public relations people, there has been no other school in the history of the competition with more grand prize winners than Canterbury.”
Last year, Shepard was one of the students from Canterbury who attended the international competition, said Edwards.
For more information on the international competition, visit: sciserv.org/isef.