Cloquet Science Students Selected For National Competition

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May 19, 2012

Northland Sports Online

Five Cloquet Students were selected from the Northeast Minnesota Regional Science Fair held at the University of Minnesota Duluth in February to attend the Fifth Annual International Sustainable World Energy, Engineering & Environment Project Olympiad (ISWEEEP) in Houston, Texas, May 2-7.

The Cloquet students and their mentor Dr. Cynthia Welsh, attended the event with young scientists from 70 countries and 43 U.S. states. The Cloquet students displayed their science projects along with 460 other science projects from around the world on pressing issues of energy, engineering, and environment at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

Participants enjoyed the opportunity to meet with their friends from different parts of the world; seeing that they are not the only ones committed to find solutions to global environmental problems that will create a sustainable world. The I-SWEEEP awards are valued at nearly $450,000 in scholarships, monetary prizes, tuition grants, and scientific internships (www.isweeep.org).

Alec Lamirande and his partner Preston Jackson, both Cloquet sophomores, received a Bronze third place Grand Award. For their project titled: The design and fabrication of a drop test apparatus to evaluate vector force dispersion in materials; such as a non-Newtonian fluid mixed with recycled paper and plastic—Phase V. Jackson and Lamirande were given assistance from Joel Nicol and Richard Rhoades.

Cassandra Roy, William Bauer and Christian Wood received honorable mentions. Roy for her project titled: The development of a Cloud based methodology to share images of dysenteric chromosomes and collect data for the use in an international collaboration for dose assessment in a radiation emergency, and Wood and Bauer for their project titled: The Application of Web Technologies as a Means for the Design and Implementation of an Advanced Food Safety Analysis System, Focusing on Institutional Needs in Relation to Potential Allergens.

Roy was given assistance from Dr. Gordon Livingston and Mollie Abbott from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Bauer and Wood were given expert advice from Don Bremmer (Donneray Consulting). Cloquet Science Fair program is supported by the Cloquet Educational Foundation and Cloquet Public Schools.

The NE MN Regional Science Fair major sponsors are the UMD Swenson College of Science and Engineering, Donneray Consulting-Software Developer, IKONICS, Inc, Duluth Rotary Club #25, American Chemical Society and the North Shore Mining the Minnesota Power Foundation.

Also, American Indian students were also sponsored by the National Science Foundation through the University of Minnesota. With the help of Holly Pellerin’s Manoomin Project and Dr. Diana Dalbotten, Director of Diversity, National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, Emi Ito and Alyssa Burger, at the University of Minnesota.