Front, from left, Dachuan Yan, Dow; Naoki Kihata, Dow; Daniel Zhang, Dow; Kaylie Barton, Dow; Ris Agrwal, Great Lakes Bay Early College; Ashley Hammond, Bullock Creek; Kaitlin Gandy, Midland Middle, from left, Mia Pardel, Midland; Serena Fleming-Dittenber, Midland; Ethan Bruce, Midland; Jessica Kline, Dow; Aaron Lehman, Lehman Academy; Collin Witt, Dow High; Jason Harnick, Bullock Creek; Emily Bennett, Bullock Creek; Hannah Bartels, Midland; Aditya Middha, Dow; Callan Herst, Bullock Creek Back, from left, Stephen O’Donnell, Dow; Robert Heyert, Dow; Mitchell Hayes, Dow; Nicole Seiler, Bullock Creek; Michael Most, Dow; Wesley Cummings, Dow; Zack O’Dell, Midland; Brandon Zhu, Dow

Twenty-eight high school interns from seven schools presented their research findings to an audience of their peers, families, and local supporters and scientists, at receptions held in their honor on Aug. 16-17. The students participated in a summer research program at the St. Andrews campus.

Research ranged from developing honey bee miticides to working with novel Lewis acids as possible refrigerants.

The internship program was created to provide high-level STEM learning opportunities for area students. Students conducted research in teams and were mentored by PhD researchers while working on real-world projects in sophisticated labs.

A new project, added for 2017, was computer programming.

Ten students spent the first few weeks learning the fundamentals of programming in PYTHON, then synthesized biodiesel and gathered NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrum results from their samples. They then combined this knowledge to create and train a neural network to read