Check out the annual firefighting home robot contest at Trinity College, near Hartford, Conn., or the Botball tournament in San Diego, capping a standards-based educational robotics curriculum. Mars rovers, service bots, robotic dogs… there’s plenty to learn about intelligent machines.

Click here to find an event in your area!

Biofuels, new ways to treat diseases, and computer algorithms that help robots avoid obstacles are among the research projects that netted 10 high school seniors top honors in the 2013 Intel Science Talent Search.

Launched in 1942, the Talent Search remains the nation’s most prestigious science and engineering research competition. (Think Academy Awards on steroids!) Alumni have gone on to win seven Nobel Prizes, five National Medals of Science, 11 MacArthur Foundation “genius” awards, and even an Oscar – Natalie Portman’s for Best Actress in the movie “Black Swan.”

This year, some 40 finalists from 20 states vied for $630,000 in awards. The group, honored at the White House on March 12, was winnowed from a field of 1,712 applicants.

Watch the finalists set up their projects and describe what they love about science, engineering, and innovation.

Meet the top three champions – and watch them describe their projects:

First place winner Sara Volz:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sara Volz, 17, of Colorado Springs, Colo., won the top award of $100,000 for her research on converting algae into sustainable, renewable biofuels. Algae produces oil but turning it into fuel can be costly. Volz, who built a home lab under her loft bed and sleeps on the same light cycle as her algae, used artificial selection to establish populations of algae cells with high oil content, which are essential for an economically feasible biofuel. WATCH VIDEO.

Second-place honors and a $75,000 award went to Jonah Kallenbach, 17, of Ambler, Pa., whose bioinformatics study breaks new ground in predicting protein binding for drug therapy. Kallenbach’s work suggests a new path to drug design by targeting a protein’s disordered regions and may open doors to treatment for such diseases as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and tuberculosis.

Third-place honors and $50,000 went to Adam Bowman, 17, of Brentwood, Tenn., who successfully designed and built a compact and inexpensive, low-energy, pulsed plasma device. Typical plasma sources are large, complicated and expensive. Using his inexpensive technology, Bowman believes plasma research can now be conducted in small-scale operations and even high school labs.

In addition to the prize money, participants in the Talent Search and Intel Science and Engineering Fair will receive digital badges. Some states also are beginning to award certificates or badges for accomplishments outside of the classroom.

Guest author Bo Yuan (photo, above) is an engineering student at the University of British Columbia. He created this post for senior instructor Annette Berndt’s technical writing class.

Like many high school students, I was a little confused about what I should pursue as a career.  Frankly, I went into the Faculty of Applied Science without any clear idea of what an engineer does. A group of senior mining engineering students pointed me into the right direction. They told me: “If you like to play with big machines and to blow up stuff legally, then go into mining engineering.”

Here are photos of a giant “monster,” a Bucket Wheel Excavator used in open pit mines:

Well, explosions and blowing stuff up definitely sounds very exciting, but I joined mining engineering  because I was attracted to their camaraderie, their spirit of unity, and the future of having huge responsibilities.

Yes, big machines come with big responsibility. The cost of a single replacement tire for a haul truck is $50,000.  Engineers have the ability to change our world, so they must take responsibility for what our world is changing into.

You probably have not realized how important mining is to our world.  Laptops, cars, medicines, and even bread all contain elements that have to be mined.  As a result, mining raw materials is essential for our society to work.

What if natural resources start to run out? This is when mining becomes even more interesting. Some pioneers have already started working on Space Mining. We might be just in time to become the first generation of space miners!

Learn about asteroid mining:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Investigators at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin have figured out how to make the flexible, wearable circuit board from polyurethane, a plastic often used as a sealant. They fitted it with sensors that monitor breathing in the chest and stomach areas, and ironed it onto baby-size PJs.

The flexible circuit could also be used in pressure bandages for burn wounds; the sensors would help nurses to fit them onto patients with more precision.

Meanwhile, a sister organization, the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems, has come up with a hardware/software device that would enable patients undergoing physical rehabilitation to do their physiotherapy exercises at home. The “physio box” plugs into a TV and runs videos of training programs developed especially for the patient, based on a 3-D biomechanical computer model of him or her. A video camera records each session and sends the results to a physiotherapist who can monitor a patient’s progress and adapt the exercises, as needed. A set of sensors can be placed in a chest strap, cane, or watch to measure vital signs and send the data to a smartphone.

A little piece of red tape – and discovering she had diabetes – changed Wendy Peng’s career plans.

Here is the University of British Columbia engineering student’s story, written for the blog competition that forms the first assignment in instructor Annette Berndt’s Technical Communication course.

“To be honest, I’ve always wanted to be a business woman since I was in grade seven. I always dreamed that someday in the future I would become one of the most influential women on Wall Street.  The reason why I wanted to be a business woman is simple: I wanted to make MONEY. However, things changed dramatically in my 9th grade summer.

I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.  This means that I have to inject insulin for the rest of my life.  Traditionally, Type 1 Diabetes patients use syringes to inject insulin. However, injecting with syringes is really inconvenient. For example, you are not allowed to eat whenever you like, you have to take a shot every time you eat, and you have to tolerate the soreness of injections.

Fortunately, my family is able to afford a more advanced therapy for me: insulin pump therapy. (See YouTube video.)  Although this newly developed pump has greatly improved the quality of my life, it also brings another problem:  Skin allergies.  The tape used to attach the infusion set on my body causes serious redness on my skin. This little piece of red tape has totally changed my career plans. My future is in engineering.

I decided to study materials engineering because I plan to gain a better understanding of the tape material and possibly become involved in its production and development.  In materials engineering, we investigate materials from different aspects, such as the microstructure and macrostructure.  I intend to major in biomaterial engineering to achieve my ultimate goal of improving medical materials and helping people like me with the same problem.

What can you do to help people who can’t be cured?  Study engineering and find out!

What is diabetes? Watch and find out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

2012 was yet another busy year for engineers all over the world. From inventing a Star Wars-style Hoverbike to snowboarding in an LED-Encrusted Snowboarding Suit, scientists and engineers are exploring uncharted territory.

Like last year, and in 2010, we at eGFI have chronicled the most awe-inspiring innovations and stories, so in case you missed one, we present:

The Most Popular, Interesting, Weird, or Just Plain Cool eGFI Blog Posts of 2012

	Star Wars-style Hoverbike
	High-tech Fibers
	Solar Flair
	Sustainable Slopes
	Student Inventors: Gabrielle Palermo and G3Box
	Student Inventors: Jessica Ashmead, and Annicka Carter
	Student Inventors: Manu Sharma
	An LED-Encrusted Snowboarding Suit
	Touchscreens of the Future
	Power Up on the Floor

ImagineCup 2012 final. QuadSquad (Ukraine) promo video:

Tokyo’s new 2,080-foot Sky Tree, the world’s tallest broadcast tower, is projected to draw 32 million visitors a year. But tourists won’t see one of its most striking features – a design intended to survive severe earthquakes and catastrophic winds.

Engineers began by studying soil formation as deep as 1.8 miles and taking meteorological measurements using a radiosonde balloon. The structure itself has a tripod base anchored with rootlike walled spikes plunging 330 feet. Above the ground, designers drew inspiration from the central column in Japan’s earthquake-resistant five-story pagodas, some of which have stood for more than 1,300 years. Adapting the design for the Sky Tree, they decoupled the core from the outer steel structure, with energy-absorbing oil dampers in between. The upper part of the column acts as a balancing weight against swaying. The end result, proclaims a paper by Thomas Bock of Munich Technical University, is “one of the safest buildings ever built.”

Video: Tokyo’s “Sky Tree“: An architectural wonder – CBS News Video

Photo: Kyodo/Newscom

What do Jack-O-Lanterns have to do with engineering? Plenty, if you’re among the scores who participate in the pumpkin drops and launch contests that many engineering schools host around Halloween! There’s even an annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin’ contest in Delaware that attracts kids and adults alike.

Behind these fun events lies some serious engineering, physics, and math. Catapults and trebuchets, for example, are versions of the simple lever – which works like a see-saw to hurl America’s signature yellow gourd for hundreds of feet. Improving a launcher’s aim and distance requires knowing something about vectors and the force of gravity.

Pumpkin smashes offer a great way to apply classroom lessons to a real-world engineering challenge – and have a blast doing it. Happy Halloween!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pumpkin Launch hosted by the University of Rochester’s chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sure, engineers build bridges, protect the environment, and tackle other big problems to make the world a better place. But they design fun things, too!

Consider the Popinator, a fully automated, voice activated popcorn-launching machine. Created by an electrical engineer at kettlecorn maker Popcorn Indiana, the device fires a puffy morsel when it hears the word “pop.” Because each piece is a different shape and size, pinpointing the source of the sound and adjusting the aim to deliver popcorn to a mouth represents some very sophisticated engineering.  The Popinator, which shoots up to 15 feet, has been a huge hit at the company’s headquarters.

See the Popinator in action:

Click here to view the embedded video.