Shannon Babb, 18, won the top honors in the Intel Science Talent Search. She won for her research and remediation work on pollution affecting the Spanish Fork River and its tributaries near her home in Highland, Utah.

Kiran Reddy Pendri, 17, of South Glastonbury, Conn., synthesized a new type of organic compound, a novel macrocyclic alkene dithiolactone, for his Intel science project. Pendri built on recent Nobel prize winning research in chemistry.

Jennifer Taylor, an Intel contest finalist, presents her project, an investigation of prescription drugs and pathogens in the Tennessee River.

Elyse Hope explains her contest project: creating a novel program for determining the three-dimensional movement rates of sunspots and active solar magnetic regions.

Joseph Vellone, from Armonk, N.Y., was a finalist for his work on the fuel cell powering alternative-energy vehicles from GM.

Adam Solomon won a $20,000 scholarship and an Intel notebook for his project, “The Effects of Age on Brown Dwarf Spectral Features in the Near-Infrared.” Solomon, 16, attends John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, N.Y.

John Moore with his engineering project, in which he developed a remote-control Micro Air Vehicle that adhered to DARPA regulations.

For his material science submission, John Zhou synthesized three groups of organic polymers with conductive, magnetic and biodegradable traits. His paper on this new class of materials, called organic magnets, has been submitted for peer review for journal publication.

Justin Solomon presented a computer science project in which he created new algorithms for the development of a three-dimensional facial recognition system.