Chris Ayers | Society for Science & the Public

High school senior Shahir Rahman shows off his prototype microwave at the prestigious national science contest where he placed fourth among the nation's high school seniors.

By BETSY HAMMOND

Westview High's Shahir Rahman, who engineered a microwave that can heat different foods on the same plate to just the right temperatures, won fourth place and a $100,000 prize Tuesday in the nation's most prestigious science competition for high school seniors.

Rahman, who will head to MIT in the fall, impressed the judges with his original thinking, his engineering prowess and his willingness to try, fail, and try again, said Sudarshan Chawathe, a Stanford-educated computer science professor who headed the contest's 15-judge panel.

Using sensors and machine learning algorithms, Rahman created a microwave that can heat a single plate of food with this result: rice piping hot, chicken thoroughly warmed but not rubbery and salad still crunchy and cold.

His work was "obviously intrinsically interesting to anyone, even non-scientists, in terms of the application," Chawathe said. "If I were in the microwave business, I would certainly pay a lot of attention to" his findings.

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Chris Ayers | Society for Science & the Public

Raley Schweinfurth, a student at Oregon Episcopal School, presented her research on bee die-offs and honey and soil contamination at the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation's oldest and most prestigious science competition for high school seniors.

Raley Schweinfurth of Portland, a senior at Oregon Episcopal School who conducted research into mass bee die-offs and ways to rid soil of the toxic chemicals responsible, won 10th place and a $40,000 prize.

That made Oregon one of only three states -- along with Colorado and New York -- to claim two winners this year. It’s been five years since an Oregon student last made the winners list, and in the past 25 years, the state never had two winners.

In 2009, Eugene's Eric Larson won first place. He's now a fifth-year graduate student in math at MIT getting ready to graduate.

The contest, which has run continuously since 1942 and was previously sponsored by Westinghouse and then by Intel, is now known as the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Phamaceutical giant Regeneron took over sponsorship of the contest, run by the Society for Science & the Public, in part because its president George Yancopoulos' life was changed when he was a winner of the contest in 1976.

From thousands of competitors, contest organizers select 40 finalists to put their projects and scientific smarts on display in Washington, D.C. each March. Ten are named winners. They are chosen not only on the merits of their research but also on their scientific and analytical skills, as revealed during intensive interviews with panels of scientists and when judges stop by their posters to pose questions about their work.

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Chris Ayers | Society for Science & the Public

Shahir Rahman said the most challenging portion of the competition came when small panels of scientists asked him to analyze novel situations in scientific fields in which he had no experience. He had to think hard on his feet, practically as if he were conducting new research in his head on the spot, he said.

Rahman said those interviews stretched him to his intellectual max. “What was challenging was them asking me to analyze scientific scenarios that I have very little experience with, things I had no idea about. It really tested my scientific analytical abilities. It was like having to do research on the spot.”

Placing fourth still hadn’t sunk in late Tuesday. “I am like in complete disbelief, complete disbelief,” he said.

He and Schweinfurth celebrated their two-fer afterward, he said, chanting, “Team Oregon! Team Oregon!”

Schweinfurth’s research determined that some plants and bacteria can remove neonicotinoids, the class of insecticides that kill bees, from soil where the chemicals would otherwise persist for years.

Though she is still in high school, Chawathe said, “her results are already something I would imagine has had real-world impact. If I were working with pesticides, this would certainly inform my work already."

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Photos provided by the winners

Raley Schweinfurth and Shahir Rahman were among 40 finalists from across the nation chosen to compete in the Regeneron Science Talent Search underway in Washington, D.C.

Maya Ajmera, president of the Society for Science & the Public, was effusive about the two Portland-area students’ work.

“We are so excited that Shahir’s patent-pending prototype may lead to microwave ovens that are safer and more user-friendly,” she said. “Raley is a very promising scientist whose research on the contamination levels of bee populations is needed more urgently than ever.”

The top honors, and $250,000 cash award, went to Benjy Firester of New York City. He developed a mathematical model that can predict how weather patterns will spread spores of fungus that caused the Irish potato famine of the 1840s and still causes billions of dollars in damage to crops every year.

Winners are free to spend their award money as they wish. Rahman’s plans? “Right now I don’t even know,” he said, clearly at a loss for words. “I will figure it out.”

-- Betsy Hammond

betsyhammond@oregonian.com

@chalkup