Kenner student earns third place at U.S. science fair

Grade 10 student continues his 13-month winning streak

Last Friday marked the culmination of hours of research, hard work and determination for a Peterborough high school student when he pulled off a third-place win at a prestigious science fair in the United States.

Calvin Karthik, a Grade 10 student at Kenner Collegiate, was part of the science fair team representing Canada at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair 2022, held from May 7 to 13.

Karthik was one of 10 students from across Canada who made up Team Canada and competed virtually at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Karthik entered his project “A Mighty Mushroom and the Power of Poop: Testing Biogas Production using Spent Mushroom Substrate” into the Peterborough Regional Science Fair in April 2021.

After winning there he continued on to win a top project award at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in May 2021 and then won an award at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in October before completing his awards sweep at the Regeneron ISEF earlier this month.

The difference between this ISEF and other science fairs is the amount of people who come from all over the world to participate, said Karthik.

“It’s just a massive event,” he said. “A huge difference aside from the recognition you get, there’s a bunch of American Ivy League universities there and they have these booths you can go to and talk to these universities.”

Since Team Canada attended virtually, Karthik was unable to speak

with any of the universities that were in attendance, but he did receive emails from several to attend open house events, including at Georgia Tech.

“We got invitations and a link to come and check out the university through our emails, so I got a few emails from different universities,” Karthik said. “I’m guessing that being at ISEF would be a plus for them just seeing how they were at ISEF and they’re scoping out for potential students.”

About 2,000 students competed at the ISEF from all over the world.

“It’s a rare opportunity, some kids have attended more than once, and some have never got any awards,” he said. “Even third place is huge when you compare it to how many people were participating in the event.”

Karthik is hoping to continue participating in the science fairs until he is no longer able, but to do that, he will have to enter a new experiment with new research and hypotheses, as his current research can only be used for a period of one year in the science fair circuit.

“I don’t think I can continue with the same project, but I can definitely do expansions of my projects and test different aspects of what I’m doing,” Karthik said. “I’d really love to do that in upcoming science fairs.”

Looking forward, Karthik said, it is a big deal since he has entered other science fairs before and never won any awards.

“That bummed me out, but once I got to Peterborough Regional, I was super excited because that was the first science fair I got first prize,” he said.

“I was really happy with that, then Canada-Wide came along, and I got first there and then I got a university award, and now at ISEF I got a third, I’m just super proud and I think it’s a huge deal.”

Karthik’s awards streak includes first at Peterborough Regional

Even third place is huge when you compare it to how many people were participating.

CALVIN KARTHIK KENNER COLLEGIATE STUDENT

Science Fair, the CanadaWide Science Fair’s Best Project Award, Discovery CWSF Challenge Award, Energy CWSF Excellence award, CWSF Renewable Energy Award Gold Medal and CWSF Honours Finalist, plus a Ministry of Universities award at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists.

Karthik recently had the opportunity of having his research printed May 3 in the Canadian Science Fair Journal for his science fair project.