IAW Junior, Dean Jordan, first participated in our regional fair (the Science and Engineering Fair of Metropolitan Detroit/SEFMD) and won the grand award at the fair. A total of eight grand awards were given out of 515 projects. In addition, he won the Regeneron Biomedical Science Award, an award given by Regeneron (the main sponsor of ISEF) but awarded regionally.
Dean won the 2nd-place grand award in Biomedical Engineering. Dean was awarded over $2,500 in prize money!
To briefly summarize, his research creates a computational mechanism to map out the complete structures of specific areas of the brain with machine learning. It aims to allow scientists to analyze the connectome (wiring diagram) of the brain. A connectome includes the neurons and connections between neurons in a brain, and, while currently, the largest complete connectome is that of a fruit fly, human connectome segmentation would allow scientists to reverse-engineer the brain to understand how it works. However, as connectome segmentation is manually done with electron microscopy, it is effectively impossible to perform this for the entire human brain. As such, his method creates a tool to segment any area on-the-fly rather than attempting to segment the entire structure.
Click here to see a full list of Award Winners.
Congratulations Dean!!! #IArocks