PSA, an all boys boarding school located in Putnam, Connecticut, was opened at the beginning of the 2002-2003 academic year and serves both local and international students from around the world.
A total of 10 trophies and 14 medals were earned by the PSA students, leading the school to win first place at the fair. Eighty projects among 500 had been chosen to compete at the fair in various categories. Students presented their projects to a jury, and the best projects among the finalists were selected for trophies in each category.
The award ceremony started with a special plaque won by Mehmet Sencan, a senior, for his successive years of attendance at the science fair. Top two awards for the physical sciences category, the main category of the fair, were announced in the beginning. Sencan and Abdurrahman Cam won first place, while Yusuf Yılmaz and Fadıl Sencan earned second place. Mehmet Sencan and Cam’s environment friendly photodegradation of toxic phenol in water by using chlorophyll was the winning project in the category. The first place winners of this category will also compete in the International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering and Environment) Project Olympiad (ISWEEP), which is scheduled to take place from April 14 to 19 in Houston.
Among other outstanding achievements PSA students also won first place in the environmental science category and third place in the applied technology and the future sustainability categories.
The PSA students’ supervising teacher, Serdar Haytiyev, who is also a chemistry teacher at the school, said their students worked hard for success at the fair. Indicating that he and the school are very proud of the students’ achievements, Haytiyev said: “I believe that it is essential for students who aspire to be future scientists to participate in these scientific competitions. However, students need to realize that these competitions require a deep sense of dedication and effort. Our students were quite aware of this, and they worked day and night on their projects to find solutions for the problems our world is facing today. They did inquiry-based, high level research that will help them throughout their future academic lives.”
