Bellevue teens targeting salmon die-offs and mental health win big at international science fair

Two teenagers from Bellevue, Wash., took home a combined $125,000 at the world’s largest high school science competition this month — one for a low-cost filter that could help save Puget Sound’s salmon, the other for an AI-powered device that expands access to music therapy.

Lakshmi Agrawal, a senior at Interlake High School, and Anusha Arora, a sophomore who also attends Interlake, were among more than 1,700 students from roughly 60 countries who competed at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix.

The annual competition, run by the Society for Science, is the world’s largest science and engineering contest for high schoolers and handed out more than $7 million in awards this year.

Agrawal, 18, won the Regeneron Young Scientist Award and a $75,000 prize for developing a low-cost, biodegradable sponge that filters a tire-derived chemical linked to the mass die-offs of coho salmon in Puget Sound-area streams. The chemical, 6PPD-quinone, has been identified as a primary culprit in kills that wipe out up to 80% of returning adult coho in some urban waterways before they can spawn.

To tackle the problem, Agrawal turned to an unlikely raw material: waste fibers from the jute plant. In lab tests, her sponge-like filters removed up to 80% of the pollutant from water containing tire particles, and also captured heavy metals and other contaminants. Compared to existing filtration alternatives, her approach required 85% less energy to produce and cut costs by roughly 98%.

Agrawal is headed to MIT in the fall to study chemistry and chemical engineering.

Learn more about her project here.

Arora, 15, took home the F. Thomson Leighton and Bonnie Berger Family Prize for STEM Excellence and $50,000 for building a portable music therapy platform that uses artificial intelligence to generate personalized music in real time based on a listener’s emotional state.

The device reads biometric signals through finger sensors and runs them through a suite of 11 AI models to detect emotions and compose adaptive music on the fly. In testing, users showed measurable reductions in stress and anxiety and stayed more engaged with therapy sessions than with conventional approaches.

Arora designed the platform to address a gap she identified in mental health care — music therapy is a clinically recognized treatment, but cost, provider shortages and spotty insurance coverage put it out of reach for most people.

Learn more about her project here.

Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of Society for Science, said she never fails to be inspired by the students who compete in the fair.

“They come from different backgrounds, different disciplines, and different corners of the world, and they are taking on some of our most urgent challenges with rigor, imagination, and determination,” Ajmera said in a statement. “At a moment when bold thinking is needed most, they are proof of what’s possible. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future.”

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