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Regeneron Science Talent Search 2025 Awards More Than $1.8 Million to High School Seniors for Innovative Research on Classifying Celestial Objects, Treating a Rare Muscle Disease and Solving a Long-Standing Math Problem
$250,000 top award goes to Matteo Paz in America's longest running and most distinguished science and math competition TARRYTOWN, N.Y. and WASHINGTON, March
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[{"type":"text","content":"$250,000 top award goes to Matteo Paz in America's longest running and most distinguished science and math competition\nTARRYTOWN, N.Y. and WASHINGTON, March 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Society for Science (the Society) announced that Matteo Paz, 18, of Pasadena, California, won the top award of $250,000 in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the U.S.'s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nNow in its 84th year, the competition celebrates and rewards young innovators who are applying their Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) talent and leadership skills to push the boundaries of discovery and address today's pressing challenges.\nForty finalists, including Matteo, were honored this evening during an award ceremony at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C, where they were awarded more than $1.8 million in prizes for their groundbreaking research, exceptional problem-solving skills and potential to shape the future of STEM.\nMatteo Paz, 18, of Pasadena, California, won first place and $250,000 for designing machine-learning algorithms to efficiently comb through 200 billion entries of raw NEOWISE infrared full-sky data. By analyzing tiny changes in infrared radiation, the AI sorted the objects into 10 classes. He found 1.5 million new potential objects.Second place and $175,000 went to Ava Grace Cummings, 18, of Smithfield, North Carolina, for creating a fruit fly model of STAC3 disorder, or Native American myopathy (a rare genetic muscle disease). She found that the common nettle herb, alone or combined with the experimental drug Tirasemtiv, improved movement in both adult flies and larvae.Third place and $150,000 went to Owen Jianwen Zhang, 18, of Bellevue, Washington, who solved a long-standing math problem about objects called 3-uniform hypergraphs. He proved a maximum value for how many 3-uniform hypergraphs can have similar structures but differing connections. Owen's results have applications in computer science.\"Congratulations to the winners of this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search,\" said Maya Ajmera, President and CEO, Society for Science and Executive Publisher, Science News. \"The remarkable creativity and dedication of these students bring renewed hope for our future. Driven by th...