Ridgefield High Senior Wins Trip to CERN in International Science Fair

Five Connecticut students won awards at the 2014 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) — the world’s largest pre-college science fair — including Ridgefield High School senior Isabelle Goldstein.

The students traveled to the ISEF, held this week in Los Angeles, to compete with 1,753 high school students from over 70 countries, regions and territories around the globe for over $5 million in awards.

The all-female Connecticut student delegation travelled all expenses paid as part of their prize for earning top awards at the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair (CSEF) held in March.

“It is especially noteworthy that this year we have all young women representing our state,” said Bob Wisner, Director of the CSEF. “It is a testament to Connecticut’s science programs, and we are thrilled to have them come home with so much.”

Isabelle Goldstein’s project “Partitioning Gamma-Ray Sources in Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations for Spatial and Spectral Analysis” won her an all expense paid trip to the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, from the European Organization for Nuclear Research and a $500 U.S. savings bond from the Ashtavadhani Vidwan Ambati Subbaraya Chetty Foundation.

Goldstein also submitted the following to the event’s newsletter while in Los Angeles:

Wednesday was a whirlwind of a day, equal parts dizzyingly fast and unbearably slow. We met for breakfast at the hotel at 6 a.m., then kept getting ready until leaving at 7:30. The nine-hour judging period was broken up by a one and a half hour lunch, where we wolfed down a fantastic meal and exchanged stories about the special awards and grand awards judges.  

We all agreed that whatever happens on award day, the presentations were on par with our abilities. But with the amount of time spent standing and talking, it’s no surprise that we all passed out as soon as got back to the hotel. A mere hour later we were on the bus to Universal Studios.  

The first thing we did after a photo op was lose each other, but we were able to reconnect periodically to talk about the rides as well as Anu believing a very blatantly labeled rollercoaster was a simulation. At the end of the day, Intel ISEF’s clever plan to keep us from stressing about judging results worked perfectly.

Isabelle Goldstein
Senior, Ridgefield High School