Lynbrook High School senior Kaylie Hausknecht will take her science research skills to the big stage as she competes in the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona from May 11-18. The fair, which is a program of Society for Science & the Public, is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition for high schoolers. 

Kaylie is among about 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions and territories who were selected to compete at the Intel ISEF. Here, these driven student-scientists will showcase their independent research to doctoral level scientists and compete for an average $4 million in prizes.

To be selected for the Intel ISEF, students around the world compete in local and school-sponsored science fairs. The winners of these events go on to participate in Society-affiliated regional and state fairs from which the best win the opportunity to attend the Intel ISEF. Kaylie competed in the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair with her project “Disentangling Spatial Correlations from Inhomogeneous Materials with Shift-Invariant Artificial Neural Networks.” She placed in the top 25 percent of more than 300 projects in round one and then had to be the best in her category, Physics and Energy, to be invited to ISEF. Only 20 students from the LISEF make it to the Intel ISEF level. 

“Kaylie can do anything and do it well, including just being a regular kid. That’s what makes her so awesome,” said science research teacher David Shanker. “I knew in ninth grade that Kaylie was special. For her final project, Kaylie designed an apparatus that induced head injury in fruit flies and built another to test their response to a treatment she also designed. Kaylie did three projects in one.”

Congratulations, Kaylie!