Science spread far and wide

Like any other extracurricular activity, science fair offers kids the chance to take their talents as far as they can go. A handful of Cloquet kids have done exactly that over the past six months, advancing to statewide, national and international competitions to share their research and compete for even bigger awards.

The following is a roundup of competitions and the students who got there.

International Science and Engineering Fair

Cloquet High School senior Grace Lavan and junior Johanna Bernu traveled to Los Angeles in May for Regeneron ISEF, the world's largest global science competition for high school students and the opportunity to compete for $9 million in awards and scholarships.

Lavan's project looked at the effect of human and road density on the movement of wolves on the Fond du Lac Reservation, and included using mapping software to create wolf location maps. She was guided and given wolf collar data from Fond du Lac wildlife biologist Mike Schrage.

Bernu's project used a yellow water lily root, "kaandoosh" in Ojibwe, the rhizome of the water lily root. Nuphar advena is utilized by Indigenous communities for treating bacterial overgrowth. This study aims to investigate the impact of Nuphar advena rhizome on the growth of Micrococcus luteus, an opportunistic pathogenic skin bacterium, and Lactobacillus, a probiotic intestinal bacterium. The rhizome inhibited the growth of Micrococcus luteus and did not negatively affect the intestinal bacteria. Bernu was offered a $40,000 scholarship to the University of Arizona and also $52,000 to attend Arizona State University. Bernu was assisted by two professors at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Environmental Genius Olympiad

Bernu, Lavan and Cloquet sophomore Parker Sickmann were selected to attend Genius Olympiad - an international high school project competition about environmental issues - held at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Oswego, New York, in June.

Parker Sickmann's project was titled: "A Deerlemma: Using Machine Learning to Identify Wildlife." Sickmann mounted a trail camera tree in the woods to track and monitor wildlife and study behavioral patterns. The question was: "How accurately can a machine learning model identify different animals when given different amounts of training data (trail camera animal photos)?" The short answer? As the number of images used for training increased, so did the model's ability to classify images correctly.

Bernu and Lavan both were awarded silver medals at the international event.

ArcGIS story maps

The ArcGIS online story map by Grace Lavan was selected as one of the top story maps in the Minnesota competition. Lavan was followed by her younger brother, Ethan Lavan, whose project on chicken permits was chosen as second best in the state for high school students.

Hermantown seventh graders Gabriel Bradley (grandson of Cloquet science fair advisor Cindy Welsh) and his partner Easton Mathews took first place for middle school story maps. A story map by Cloquet eighth graders Finley Holtz and Jerimiah Bents was ranked fourth in the state.

Lavan, Bradley and Mathews, Holtz and Bents' story maps all examined different questions regarding the movement of wolves on the Fond du Lac reservation, utilizing research by Schrage. Wolves are on the Endangered Species List, and dispersing wolves is critical to the expansion of wolf populations so understanding their seasonal movement patterns is important.

Lavan, Bradley and Mathew's projects all advanced to the National ArcGIS Online Story Maps Competition. All three were mentored by Cynthia Welsh, a research teacher in Cloquet and William Bauer, Cloquet schools technology department, and received ArcGIS mapping assistance from Grace Lavan, now a freshman at the University of Minnesota Duluth.