Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, 2004
 Jordan Wilson was
the Metro Richmond Science Fair’s top Grand Prize Winner
and the Fair’s representative to the Intel ISEF. Jordan is a 9th grader
at the Math & Science High School at Clover Hill and won the award for his
Computer Science project: “Evaluating the Ability of a Genetic Algorithm
to Find an Optimal Investment Portfolio”.
Jordan has been interested in investing in the stock market for a number of years and has a small portfolio which he manages. He decided to combine his interest in investing with his knowledge of computers to develop a science fair project. After designing a computer program to test his hypothesis, Jordan ran a number of trials using the results from the stock exchanges to collect data.
In May, Deepa, Jordan and his teacher, Ryan Templeton, traveled to Portland Oregon for the Intel ISEF competition. The Intel ISEF is the world’s largest pre-college science competition, with students from 40 different countries and 46 U.S. states participating. There are over 1100 projects entered into the fair. The students compete for over three million dollars worth of scholarships and prizes. Both Jordan and Deepa won special Organizational Awards at the 2004 Intel ISEF. Jordan’s project was recognized by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence with an award of $500. Deepa’s project was selected as a $500 Second Award Winner by the American Statistical Association.
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Deepa Iyer was
the Metro Richmond Science Fair’s second Grand Prize
Winner and was the Fair’s Alternate to the Intel ISEF. Deepa subsequently
competed at the Virginia State Science & Engineering Fair and was selected
as one of the State’s representatives to the ISEF. Deepa’s project
was entered in the Biochemistry category and was entitled “The Effect
of GATA-1 on Vitamin D Receptor Promoter Activity”. During the previous
school year she began working with a mentor at Virginia Commonwealth University
and has been studying Vitamin D and its effect on the human body ever since.