La Cañada Preparatory recently attended the 73rd annual Los Angeles County Science and Engineering Fair, which showcased more than 500 individual and student-team projects at USC’s Shrine Exposition Hall.
The fair featured some of the most accomplished middle- and high-school students that the county has to offer. Eighteen categories, ranging from chemistry and microbiology to environmental studies and artificial intelligence, comprised the Junior Division from which La Cañada Prep students gleaned one grand prize, three first-place wins, one third-place win and an honorable mention.
The prize-winning students included:
• Leonna Torosyan, who won the grand prize — Best of Show — for the LACSEF Junior Division — and first place in the environmental management category for “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” a project examining the advantages of composting using black soldier fly larvae.
• Raphael Kaplan, who won first place in the Southern California Paleontological Society special category and third place in the animal biology category for “How do Raptors Survive in L.A.?” The project explored the survival of birds of prey in local ecosystems.
• Yash Jaju, who won first place in the animal physiology category for “Planaria Regeneration and the Future of Medicine,” with his research on inducing regenerative processes.
• Guglielmo Cordara, who won an honorable mention in the biochemistry and molecular biology category for “Salt and Sugar, Two Silent Enemies,” with his research on the pervasiveness of glucose and sugar in foods and their effects on health.
Science teacher Stephen Miller attributes his students’ successes to the “remarkable dedication and depth” of LC Prep’s Science Department. He added that the school begins science education in pre-K, and that it remains an academic focus through graduation in 8th grade.
The school’s science program has hosted its own science fair annually for the past 27 years for students in grades 3, 5 and 7, organized by fellow science teacher, Annette Kiureghian.
Also, Miller emphasized that critiques that students receive from a parent-body panel of judges made up of science professionals also prepare them for competition at the county level. He feels that the next step for his top-three finishers may be the most challenging, because they will need “to regroup to prepare for competition at the California-state level as L.A. County representatives on April 11.”
The Learning Castle and La Cañada Preparatory are private schools for 4-year-olds through 8th-graders located on the site of the former FIS campus at 4490 Cornishon Ave.
First published in the April 13 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
