A year into President Barack Obama’s first term, he noticed a discrepancy. College basketball teams that won the NCAA championship got invited to the White House, but students who were making potentially world-changing contributions to science and technology did not. “If you’re a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement,” he said back in 2009. The White House Science Fair, which launched the following year, and the White House Maker Faire, which started in 2014, have been the public face of the president’s effort to make STEM education higher quality and more accessible. They celebrate students who are already pushing the limits of science and technology, building better Ebola tests and more-sustainable cars—in some cases before they even get a driver’s license. For Obama’s favorite projects, young scientists have ventured everywhere from the edge of space to the bottom of the sea.

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