Even in these challenging times, the Young Scientists and Developers in Israel competition was held in Jerusalem, with 53 young scientists from across the country presenting 46 projects while the war delayed the event and Home Command restrictions limited the museum to 50 visitors at one time. The competition, now in its 29th year, is part of National Science Week and is aimed at discovering and promoting the future generation of Israeli scientists from among high school students. **Who Gets to Compete** The competition included 53 young scientists from across the country, most of whom were able to present their work in person to the judges. Those who could not attend in person explained their research on Zoom, a workaround that the museum said it had already used during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bloomfield Science Museum director Rony Ben-Chaim said, “I am so proud of the participants. They excel in what they have learned and done,” and added, “They come from all over Israel, from the South to the Golan Heights. We had to delay the competition due to the war, but on judging day, most of the teens and their parents came; those who couldn’t explained their research on Zoom.” The event was managed by Jerusalem’s Bloomfield Science Museum, in collaboration with the Education Ministry’s Technological Education Administration and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It was supported by the Jerusalem Municipality, Israel Aerospace Industries, the Jerusalem Foundation, and the Mandel Foundation. The students presented 46 projects in history and social sciences, life and environmental sciences, technology and computer sciences, mathematics, and natural sciences. **What the Institutions Reward** Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund, a world expert on Einstein and theoretical physics who was the president at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, headed the judges’ panel. The judges awarded two first prizes, three second prizes, and three third prizes, with scholarships of NIS 10,000 to NIS 3,000 depending on who were the top winners. The winners will represent Israel at the ISEF Global Competition in Phoenix at the European Union’s Young Scientists and Developers Competition in May, followed by a science camp hosted by the German government and another event in Switzerland. The first-prize winners were Liam Rokach of the De Shalit High School in Rehovot for “Characterization of dark plasmon states in silver nano-bowties,” and Eyal Zakesh of the Municipal High School in Modi’in for “The effect of different lighting conditions on the kinetics of hydrogen and oxygen production in different wild microalgae strains.” A second prize was won by Tom Ashkenazi of the Kiryat Sharett School in Holon for Milah, a children’s game for developing pronunciation, which was meant to cope with the long waiting times for speech therapists to provide youngsters with regular treatment, especially in the periphery, where there is a shortage of professionals. The AI-based home practice tool analyzes the child’s speech and provides immediate feedback, using a speech recognition model specially trained on children’s speech in Hebrew and ChatGPT to analyze errors, find their location and type, and provide an adapted response. Another second prize was won by Ofir Mana of the school in Kibbutz Shoval for “Matriculation in the shadow of war: exploring the relationship between internal and external resources and academic self-efficacy,” which assessed academic self-efficacy and focused on how high school students coped with the matriculation exams during the Gaza war. The third second prize was won by Shira Krause of Tel Aviv Municipal D High School for “The effect of receiving prosocial behavior on brain activity in rats exposed to alcohol.” **What They Call Hope** One of the third prizes was won by Assaf Kadosh and Ido Korland of Shamir High School in Petah Tikva for “DogSense,” a smart collar that analyzes and presents a pet’s mood to the owner via a phone interface, allowing the owner to respond in a more tailored manner to the dog’s behavior. The product minimizes the use of electric training collars, helping a puppy or an adopted shelter dog adapt to its environment and contributing to a more efficient, safe, and humane training process. Another third-prize project was not named in the source. One of the seven projects that won an honorary mention was “DeFOG,” a system for identifying and monitoring motion stagnation in Parkinson’s disease patients who have tremors and stagnation in movement, which exists in half of the victims around the world. Yarin Dantes of the ORT School in Kiryat Bialik devoted his project to helping patients suffering from sudden stops in place during movement or the beginning of movement that can cause falls and loss of self-confidence. The source said there is no marketed solution that can help those people who experience the phenomenon, and all solutions exist only in the laboratory. Ben-Chaim said, “But we are worried about what will happen next year and the year after that, as missing their classes now and the pressure from matriculation exams could make the teens decide not to pursue their research,” adding, “This happened as a result of the pandemic as well.” She also said, “This year’s projects have touched on the most pressing questions of our time: from personal security and health, through artificial intelligence to space exploration. They prove that Israel’s young generation is not only curious, but also courageous, creative, and committed to improving reality,” and added, “Especially in these challenging times, the choice of young people to invest long months in in-depth and complex research is a source of hope and strength for all of us.” The science museum has been open even during the war, but only 50 visitors are allowed to enter at one time because of Home Command restrictions. Ben-Chaim said, “Many more want to come, even though some have had to rush to our shelter during missile attacks.”
