Jefferson Lab hosts 100 of the brightest young minds in math and science

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More than 100 of the brightest young minds in the Commonwealth converged on Jefferson Lab Feb. 8 to compete in this year's Virginia Regional Science Bowl, dubbed "Science to the Core." Winning the academic competition was the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, from Alexandria. Following in second place was the Governor's School for Global Economics and Technology from Keysville, and finishing in third -- in their very first Science Bowl competition -- was Walsingham Academy from Williamsburg.

CEBAF Center and the VARC buildings were bustling with the teams, their coaches, and numerous family members and classmates watching the event. Running the tournament were more than 60 Lab employees and their family members who volunteered to perform duties as moderators, rules judges, time keepers, score keepers and scientific judges.

"Our volunteers did an outstanding job," beamed event coordinator and JLab's Science Education manager, Jan Tyler. "One hundred fifteen students, 24 teachers, and several dozen parents representing the 21 participating schools attended the Science Bowl, and many of them expressed their appreciation for the great job the Lab did in hosting this event. The Science Bowl couldn't have happened without all of our volunteer support."

"I've been involved with eight Department of Energy Science Bowl competitions over the past four years, and none ran smoother than this year's Virginia Regional Science Bowl," Tyler continued. "My staff and I thank everyone who made the tournament such a huge success. Our volunteers were fantastic, and by example, they did a great job of promoting education, academic excellence and an interest in math and science."

In an intense question-and-answer game format, the contestants were grilled on their knowledge in various fields of math and science. Morning sessions were in a round-robin format, followed by a double-elimination round in the afternoon. Winning first place at the tournament earned Thomas Jefferson High School a trip to the Science Bowl Nationals to be held in Washington, D.C. in early May. This was the team's third straight regional science bowl win; and it was last year's winner at Nationals. For finishing in first place on Feb. 8, they took home a team trophy and banner and a $1,000 prize that can be used by their school's science department. Second place won $750 for its school and third place earned $500. The Piedmont Governor's School for Math, Science and Technology won the Stay-All-Day Activities competition and took home a $300 award for their school.

One of the Virginia Regional Science Bowl competitors was returning to familiar territory when he arrived at Jefferson Lab on Feb. 8. Ryan Cash, a senior at Walsingham Academy, spent part of last summer here with the Lab's Summer Honors Internship Program (SHIP). Cash worked for Amrit Yegneswaran, head of the Hall B Instrumentation team. The student helped develop a system for automating high-voltage diagnostic tests regularly conducted on Hall B equipment. Cash's main contribution was programming the software interface for the system; and by the time his internship ended, the Lab had a working diagnostic system. For the work he did as a JLab intern, Cash was recently named a semi-finalist for the 2002-2003 Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science & Technology.