Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Society for Science announced the winners of the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, with finalists receiving more than $7 million in awards based on their projects’ creativity, innovation, and depth of scientific inquiry. The competition, held at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, featured more than 1,700 young STEM students representing more than 67 countries, regions, and territories.
Top Prize Winners
Hikaru Kuribayashi, 17, of Sapporo, Japan won first place and the $100,000 George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award for creating a simulation program to understand complex folding, like in origami. The program uses a statistical method called Markov Chain Monte Carlo to examine all possibilities at once in a single run, with potential applications for designing devices that need to be packed into small spaces and unfolded later, such as solar sails for satellites and medical devices.
Lakshmi Agrawal, 18, of Bellevue, Washington received the Regeneron Young Scientist Award of $75,000 for developing a sponge that removes salmon-killing pollutants from water. Laboratory tests showed the filters removed up to 80% of the pollutant 6PPD-quinone, required 85% less energy to produce than current alternatives, and reduced costs by about 98%.
Nikola Veselinov, 17, of Sofia, Bulgaria received the Regeneron Young Scientist Award of $75,000 for describing a new theorem in mathematics that identifies conditions under which certain equations cannot be solved using basic math functions.
Additional Award Recipients
Other top honorees included Evan Budz, 15, of Ontario, Canada, who received the Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations of $50,000 for an AI-powered underwater 3D holographic camera mounted on a self-propelled robot to find microplastics, achieving 94% accuracy. Anusha Arora, 15, of Bellevue, Washington received the F. Thomson Leighton and Bonnie Berger Family Prize for STEM Excellence of $50,000 for a portable music therapy device combining 11 AI programs to detect emotions and generate music in real time.
Additional recipients received $10,000 awards for projects including improved plastic recycling through dissolvable tags, magnetic systems to modify brain cell signals, a carbon dioxide-based treatment for honey bee pests, and an ultrasound-based system to detect and interrupt seizure-like behavior. In total, more than 540 projects received awards, with “First Award” winners each receiving a $6,000 prize.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.hastingstribune.com/ap/business/update-next-generation-of-scientific-leaders-awarded-more-than-7-million-at-the-2026/article_aef1a69a-e6a2-5e28-9bec-2778832eafd2.html