In the six major disciplines of Yau Science Awards, the winning works of the Biology Award every year always bring us a great shock. Now is the golden preparation season for the 2024 Yau Science Awards. The Embark Academic & Teaching and Research Team will bring you a full online lecture every week, six major disciplines, and 5 "nanny-level" Yau Science Awards strategy sharing to help you win the competition!

Yesterday, the Yau Science Awards Biology Special Sharing ended successfully. Now let's review the essence of what Embark Science Mentor-Teacher H said. Next, we will start from the four aspects of the Yau Science Award, the Yau Science Awards Biology Review Trend, the Yau Science Awards Winning Works Detailed Explanation and the 2024 Yau Science Awards Preparation Suggestions.

The Value of the Yau Science Award

The S.-T. Yau High School Science Award is a science innovation award for middle school students initiated and established by the mathematics master Mr.Yau Shing-tung in 2008. It is based on "scientific research academic papers" and "professional academic defense" as the evaluation subjects, and participates in the form of submitting papers.

Since its opening, the computer track has been highly influential and recognized internationally. The participating students come from top high schools at home and abroad, and more than half of the award-winning young students have successively entered famous Chinese and foreign universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Harvard, MIT, Yale, and Princeton.

The Yau Science Awards Biology Award was established in 2016. In the same year, the Chemistry Award and the interdisciplinary comprehensive award-Science Gold Award were also established.

The research topics of the Yau Science Awards Biology can be all content related to biology, including both research results obtained through experiments and pure theoretical analysis. The main factor considered by the organizing committee when judging the award is how the students solve a biological problem from the perspective of high school students.

Yau Science Awards Biology Review Trend Comments

With the increase in the number of participants, the Yau Science Awards Biology Track has continued to roll inward since 2019. Teacher H summarized the biological projects that have been shortlisted for the global finals over the years and summarized the following review trends

• 2018：Ordinary scientific research projects
• 2019：Small paper projects that touch the undergraduate level began to appear
• 2020:The workload is large, close to the level of undergraduate course final articles
• 2021:The workload is very large, reaching the height of undergraduate graduation projects
• 2022:Compared to the level of previous years, the types of winning works are more diverse

In general, the winning works before 2018 no longer have the ability to enter the finals in subsequent years. Judging from the themes of the following winning works, the research themes favored by Yau Science Awards in the past two years are indeed more diversified, which means that all sub-fields can receive comprehensive attention.

Focusing on the highest award in the biological track, the academic contribution of the gold award is the most outstanding and can obviously open up the gap with other projects. The contributions of the silver award, bronze award and winning award are relatively weak, but they are also enough to be called outstanding within the scope of middle school student scientific research.

In line with the principle of "better to have nothing than to have something bad", if there is no work with "fault-like" academic achievement differences, the organizing committee will not select the biology gold award, and this was the case last year, when the highest award in biology was won by two silver awards.

Interpretation of the winning works of Yau Science Awards Biology

As mentioned above, the highest award of Yau Science Awards Biology, Teacher H listed the 2022 Biology Double Silver Award works and the 2021 Biology Gold Award works, and compared the highlights of the three, as well as what level of academic achievements can be called "faults" and win the Yau Science Awards Biology Gold Award.

• 2022 Yau Science Awards Biology Silver Award 1

An AI-Based Ambulatory Ankle Brace with Waarable Sensor used for Preventing Ankle Sprains

The inspiration for this research mainly comes from the students' personal experience. The students joined the school basketball team in the first grade of junior high school. It was also from then on that they had an ankle injury once a school year on average, and other members of the basketball team also had more or less.

Ankle sprains can bring hidden dangers to physical health and cause a lot of time loss. People with a history of ankle sprains are more likely to relapse. Therefore, the students thought of designing a device that can prevent ankle sprains.

Figure 3

Students input data into different machine learning algorithms to create models to predict future ankle movements. The model with the best performance created by the random forest algorithm is input into a microcomputer.

Once the model predicts a high-risk movement, the microcomputer sends a Bluetooth signal to the muscle stimulator. One end of the stimulator is a pair of electrodes connected to the peroneal muscle to limit the movement of the ankle joint.

From the small discoveries of high school students to the innovative results focusing on special populations, students' thinking about daily life, potential scientific research enthusiasm, and highly completed research results are the "magic weapon" that impressed the Yau Science Awards judges.

• 2022 Yau Science Awards Biology Silver Award 2

A user-friendly algorithm to improve the accuracy and readability of intracranial hemorrhage CT detection

The student comes from a family of doctors, and both parents are experts in the medical field. This research topic was chosen because the father of the student's baseball teammate died unexpectedly due to a stroke, which was most likely caused by cerebral hemorrhage.

The accuracy of existing ICH tests is entirely based on the judgment of radiologists, but the differences between each subtype are subtle and doctors may make misdiagnoses. Students hope to develop a standard diagnostic process so that every patient can be examined within a few minutes.

Figure 4

The model established in this study can show the exact location of cerebral hemorrhage on CT images. Not only that, the students also designed an APP that allows radiologists to easily access their model and analyze their clinical CT images, bringing valuable time and accuracy to rescue patients.

This project has high accuracy and can be implemented to build an APP. Its purpose is to provide doctors with a basis for diagnosis. It is very eye-catching in terms of feasibility and social significance.

• 2021 Yau Science Awards Biology Gold Award

A molecular phylogeny of cavernicolous Oniscidea (Isopoda) in Southern China reveals multiple origins of troglodytic behavior and a new species of blind Armadillidae (Oniscidea, Isopoda)

The 2021 Yau Science Awards Biology Gold Award was won by a student who studies the taxonomy of woodlice. He used his summer vacation to travel to southern China to collect and study insects. This is the most traditional biological research, and its competitiveness is reflected in the following points:

There are fewer people doing taxonomic research now, and the research incorporates modern traditional biological methods;

The workload of the experiment is huge, and a very difficult phylogenetic tree and hand-drawn schematic diagrams are used;

A new species of woodlice was discovered during the experiment.

Yau Science Awards Preparation Tips

The Yau Science Awards is not a simple "science competition". Learning subject knowledge is only the foundation. Students should also pay attention to the selection of topics and research methods, the writing standards of academic papers, the simulation and effect of on-site defense, etc.

For the new contestants with zero scientific research foundation, Teacher H believes that they should "start from small interests to do big scientific research" and provide the following six tips for preparing for Yau Science Awards:

• Topic selection needs to consider personalization;
• Arrange time reasonably, start preparing projects as early as possible, fully polish the results of each stage, and be able to respond to emergencies;
• Do not blindly follow the trend to choose research topics, cleverly take advantage of the situation, and think twice before acting;
• Rationally use the advantages of the location (region) of the school you are attending;
• Pay attention to your own mental health, intervene and adjust in time;
• Look long-term and take the overall situation into consideration.

Founded in 2016,Embark Research Education is an educational institution that focuses on customized research training for young people. All core team members are graduates of master's and doctoral degrees from prestigious American universities. Since its establishment, it has exclusively signed more than 3,000 mentors from the Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins JHU, Carnegie Mellon CMU, Top 30 U.S. U.S. Universities, National Key Laboratories, UK G5, Max Planck Institute, ETH Zurich, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and other world-renowned universities. Through customized research training, students have won nearly a thousand awards in major global research competitions, helping them successfully enter Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge and other world-renowned universities. The 2024 Yau Science Awards is in preparation. If you want to get professional guidance for the Yau Science Awards competition, please feel free to consult Embark!

Click the link to view other articles of the Yau Science Awards:

1. Explore the Yau Science Award Mathematics Track: Cultivate Curiosity and Innovate Research Methods
2. Comprehensive Analysis of the Yau Science Awards: Insights, Highlights, and Preparation Strategies

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