Day 6

Friday, the Grand Awards Ceremony was slated to begin at 9 AM.
We woke early and walked a few blocks to Marie's, a small breakfast/lunch spot we had found earlier in the week. Bagels and cream cheese in the room, then the last walk to the convention center.

Kim and Priya had a Friday morning flight and would not be able to attend the entire ceremony. Our plans were to collect and pack Priya's project board with Dylan's for shipping back to Pensacola after the awards ceremony.

The awards presentation was a very organized and exciting event. We had our fingers crossed the entire time, hoping to hear Priya or Dylan's name. All the fourth place winners for each category gathered on the stage for both divisions, physical and life sciences after having there named announced. Unfortunately, the names of our Pensacola finalists did not make the list. We remained hopeful, sometimes you just have to wait. The lady we were sitting next to in the audience, also from Florida, fell the same anxiousness as we did. Her son was competing in his first ISEF in the engineering category with a project that used solar air conditioning.

The announcer again started listing the winners of the third place awards. As the category of computer science came up, we listened and then jumped when we heard "from Pensacola, Florida".  How proud we were to have Dylan's project lauded by the judges. He was beaming as he ran up to the stage to join the other winners. It's not often that he gets to see himself on a jumbotron screen.

Shortly there after we heard the name of our neighbor's son to recieve his third place award in engineering.
The boys headed of stage with the other winners to receive their white ribbons and have their photo taken. We had a lot of luck going on in our row of seats.

Then, the second place and first place winners were called and the excitement just grew with each higher level and finally the best of show for each category were announced. What an amazing group of finalists with the most ingenious science projects in the world.

With much celebration, the three winners of an all expense paid trip to the European Union Contest were announced. Dudley R. Herschbach, presented the award that bears his name to two deserving finalists to attend the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar. The Intel Foundation presented two finalist with the $50,000 Young Scientist award. Finally the time came for the presentation of the Gordon E. Moore Award to the best of the best of show winners. Two young men from California won this award for their project titled "Treatment of Simulated Cancer Cells with Compton Scattering-Produced Secondary Radiation". Wow!