This was just going to be a personal shout out to the many people who made last month’s Broadcom MASTERS International an event to remember. But then we got some incredible news about a Broadcom MASTERS alum that capped off an already landmark week.
The 2014 Broadcom MASTERS International delegates, an extraordinary class of 23 young scientists and engineers representing 13 nations, were hosted by Broadcom volunteers for a jam-packed week in Los Angeles and Orange County last month.
While the International program for middle schoolers kicked off at a whirlwind pace, a cohort of Broadcom MASTERS alumni were readying to compete in the high school competition. The 14 finalists, 63 semi-finalists and more than one hundred MASTERS nominees were among the 1,787 high school competitors at the 2014 Intel ISEF — the largest science and engineering fair in the world. They geared up to battle for ISEF’s coveted Gordon E. Moore Award — a whopping $75,000 cash prize.
Competitors blew off steam at Universal Studios, and then came the big news! Nathan Han, 15, a 2011 Broadcom MASTERS finalist from Boston, proved that Broadcom MASTERS make hay while the sun shines. Nathan, a budding high school scientist, took home the Moore Award for his project, “Characteristics of Deleterious Mutations in Tumor Suppressor Genes.”
We recall how Nathan wowed judges in Washington, D.C., at the 2011 Broadcom MASTERS with his middle-school project submission, “A Study of Somatic Sensory Receptive Fields in Human Skin.”
At ISEF, Nathan’s work was celebrated once again in front of packed crowd at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Nathan is in good company with other MASTERS alumni. 2011 Broadcom MASTERS semi-finalist Jack Andraka took home the Gordon E. Moore Award at the 2012 Intel ISEF. To continue the celebration, 2013 Broadcom MASTERS alumna Brenna Wallin is set to represent the competition at the President’s annual White House Science Fair this week. Her project focused on the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster that leaked radiation into the Pacific Ocean.
This week’s events took an enormous amount of effort on the part of Broadcom MASTERS team leaders and Irvine employees who hail from all over the US and the world. Everyone shared their passion and time to get to know these talented young MASTERS and encourage their continued interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
Emblematic of the dedication and esprit de corps were this year’s Broadcom MASTERS International Team Leaders: Maria Wronski (Portland/Irvine), Gordon Lindsay (UK), Ilanit Drori (Israel) and Prasanthi Sathyaprakash (Irvine), who led, nurtured and inspired our Broadcom MASTERS delegates from Australia, Canada, China, Finland, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States.
These volunteers and many others from Broadcom’s Irvine office did jobs large and small, and promoted project-based learning at our Broadcom MASTERS Convention Booth at the Intel ISEF Public Day.
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Kudos to the Broadcom Women’s and Multicultural Networks and the Communications team who hosted the enthusiastic celebration for the MASTERS delegates in an “International Salute” at Broadcom’s Irvine, Calif., headquarters. What a week!