Three Westman area students recently travelled to Regina to compete in the 56TH Annual Canada Wide Science Fair, along with 500 other grade 7-12 students with a passion for science.  Emily Robb from St. Augustine's won top awards in the Westman Science Fair with her project on aquaponics.  Runners-up Mathieuw Blakely and Christopher Vauzelle both from Ecole La Source at CFB Shilo, made up the top three achievers to travel to Saskatchewan.

Trevor Maguire is the chair for the Western Manitoba Science Fair held every spring in Brandon.  Maguire is also Executive Director and Chairperson of Youth-Science-Canada, which hosts the Canada Wide Science Fair.

Maguire says all the students who attend have the experience staying at the University of Regina campus, as well as taking in the sites of Regina and the surrounding area.  However, he says, the highlight for many of these students is the judging process where the youth get to interact with someone who shares a passion for the same field of study that they have.

“They’ve done a lot of work on their science project by the time they get there. They’ve invested a lot of time into it and they get to explain it fully.  We match the judges to the correct field so a biology project will be judged by someone with an interest in biology.  Now you’ve got a common interest.  It’s a very educational, collaborative thing and the students get a warm fuzzy feeling because they’re talking to someone who loves the same thing they do.”

The Best Project Award and Senior Platinum Award went to a grade 11 student from Calgary, Colette Benko. Benko’s project spoke to Novel Paediatric Cancer Therapy, targeting epigenetics to induce differentiation.   Her project identified a new use for an existing drug to effectively treat a deadly childhood cancer, neuroblastoma.  The study could lead to a more targeting and safe approach to chemotherapy.

Maguire says this project would fall under the under-graduate level.  “This is a remarkable achievement for a grade 11 student. And, we see these ones, they show up once in awhile and they’re truly amazing students.  They can carry on a conversation with our full PHD’s (judges and speakers) and the PHD’s walk away amazed.  When she was done she had about a dozen PHD researchers who wanted her to come and work with them.  That’s very common for our top achievers.”

Intermediate Platinum Award went to Crystal Radinski, a grade 10 student from Calgary who compared healthy brains to the brains of Alzheimr patients to find better diagnostic procedures using existing technology; an EEG.

Danish Mahmood, is a grade 8 student from London Ontario who won the Junior Platinum Award for his project called W.I.N.I.T.S (Wireless Interconnected non-Invasive Triage System) which is a low-cost system to measure and communicate vital signs wirelessly, potentially aiding first responders, paramedics and hospitals during mass casualty incidents.

These top three winners of the Canada Wide Science Fair will go on to compete in the European Union Science Fair in September.  Maguire adds these students will most likely enter into the International Science Fair held in the States later in the year under the umbrella as Team Canada.

There are 105 regional science fairs across Canada each year where up to 500 students continue on to compete in the Canada Wide Science Fair.  With Scholarships and prizes, students win up to one million dollars worth of awards by the end of the Canada Wide Science Fair.