Hamilton high schoolers win at Canada-wide Science Fair

Paul (Kyum) Lee and Mitchell Clapperton, two budding scientists from Hamilton’s Westdale Secondary School, won multiple awards at the recent Canada-wide Science Fair.

Lee (pictured) received the Gold Excellence Award for his project, “Development of a 3D Cursor for Robotic arm Programming Optimization.” Noting that robotic arms tend to be used primarily by large corporations since they are difficult to program, Lee developed a 3D cursor intended to make robotic arm programming more cost-effective and adaptive for smaller businesses.

Lee also earned the CWSF’s Ted Rogers Award, the Challenge Award (best in category), a Digital Award and the Grand Prize — Youth Canada Innovate Award.

Clapperton earned a Silver Excellence Award for his project, “Reducing Wakes to Save Our Lakes — Optimizing Hull Design Using Computational Fluid Dynamics.” Clapperton built a simulation model with the aim of improving hull design in order to reduce boat wakes in freshwater lakes.

The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, which announced the awards on Thursday, was also represented at the CWSF by Westdale students Maria Chzhen and Renny Wang. Chzhen and Wang’s project was: “How Do Sleep Positions Affect Dreams In Teenagers?”

Neha Gupta, who also attends Westdale, also competed at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair 2021 with her project, “Microfluidic C. elegans electrotaxis procedure towards the detection of heavy metal residue in water.”

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Both science fairs were held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.