Contributed by the White House Press Department

WASHINGTON D.C.- Detroit Students Imagining the Energy Efficient City of the Future were invited to the White House as part of the White House Science Fair. The Paul Robeson/Malcolm X Academy student team from Detroit, Michigan, competed in the Michigan Regional Contest of the National Engineers Week Future City Competition for the second year in a row.  Lucas Cain Beal, Jayla Mae Dogan, and Ashley Cassie Thomas, all aged 13, were part of a team that won the Excellence in Engineering Award at the 2012 Michigan Regional Competition focused on designing a city around the theme of ”Fuel Your Future: Imagine New Ways to Meet Our Energy Needs and Maintain a Healthy Planet.”   After being named Best Rookie Team in 2011, the students had to overcome losing their school to a fire.  Despite the adversity and having to merge with another school, the students were energized to take on the Future City challenge again, saying “(Future City) helps me make a better city to live in.”

Suzan Shalhout, a 7^th grader at O.W. Holmes Elementary-Middle School in Detroit also was present representing the DoD STARBASE program.

President Obama was host to the second White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country. The President also announced key additional steps that the Administration and its partners are taking to prepare 100,000 effective math and science teachers and to meet the urgent need to train one million additional STEM graduates over the next decade.

There’s a group of young engineers from Paul Robeson-Malcolm X Academy.  And nobody needs to tell them the kinds of challenges that Detroit still faces.  Where’s my team from Detroit?  In the house — there they are.  Stand up.  (Applause.)  They believe in their city, and they’re coming up with new ideas to keep Detroit’s comeback going.

“When students excel in math and science, they help America compete for the jobs and industries of the future,” said President Obama. “That’s why I’m proud to celebrate outstanding students at the White House Science Fair, and to announce new steps my Administration and its partners are taking to help more young people succeed in these critical subjects.”

The President hosted the first-ever White House Science Fair in late 2010, fulfilling a commitment he made at the launch of his Educate to Innovate campaign to inspire boys and girls to excel in math and science. Over the past year, the President met with the three young women who won the Google Science Fair, met a student robotics team on his bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia, and made a surprise appearance at the New York City Science Fair. The second White House Science Fair will include over 100 students from over 45 states, representing over 40 different STEM competitions that recognize the talents of America’s next generation of scientists, engineers, inventors and innovators. More than 30 student teams will have the opportunity to exhibit their projects this year, almost twice as many as the first White House Science Fair. The President will view exhibits of the student work, ranging from breakthrough research to new inventions, followed by remarks to an audience of students, science educators and business leaders on the importance of STEM education to the country’s economic future.

Others at the event include:

• Building an Award-Winning Robot and Learning Entrepreneurial Lessons. Morgan Ard, Titus Walker, and Robert Knight, III, 8th grade students at Monroeville Jr. High School in Monroeville, Alabama won high honors at the South BEST robotics competition.  BEST teams mimic industry by designing and developing a product and delivering it to market, including a marketing presentation, engineering notebook, trade-show style exhibit booth and robot competition.   Through the experience, these middle school students not only learned the innovation and engineering  necessary to develop an award-winning robot, but the marketing and business  skills that spark true entrepreneurial spirit.
• Student “Making” and Starting Small Business to Sell his Invention. Fourteen year old Joey Hudy fromPhoenix, Arizona is already a Maker Faire veteran.  He invented an Extreme Marshmallow Cannon and an LED Cube Microcontroller Shield, which he has exhibited at Maker Faires in New York, San Francisco, and Detroit.  He received 2 Editors Choice Awards from Maker Faire, and has started a small business selling the microcontroller (Arduino) shield kits on several websites.  As the World’s Largest Do-It-Yourself Festival, Maker Faire is the premier event for grassroots American innovation.
• Student Designing a Robot to Connect Senior Citizens with their Families. Concerned with the loneliness of seniors at his grandmother’s senior living center, fourteen-year old Salesianum High School (Wilmington, DE) student Benjamin Hylak of West Grove, Pennsylvania, built an interactive robot, which qualified him as a BROADCOM Masters 2011 Finalist.  His telepresence robot which moves around the center and allows seniors to connect via Skype with their family and friends when they are unable to visit in person, earned him second place in the BROADCOM Masters Engineering Category.

• Developing a Portable Disaster Relief Shelter. Jessica D’Esposito, Colton Newton and Anna Woolery from Petersburg, Indiana are representing the Pike Central High School InvenTeam, one of fifteen schools selected nationwide.  They won a grant from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop a lightweight, portable disaster relief shelter, designed to be complete with a water purification system and a renewable energy source to power an LED light, which could be used after disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or tornadoes to house people who have been displaced.

• Young Women Rocketing to Nationals.  Janet Nieto and Ana Karen of Presidio, Texas were members of the Presidio High School Rocketry Team that competed as a National Finalist in the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) in 2009, 2010, and 2011.  Gwynelle Condino, a 7th grade student at Lucy Franco Middle School, also of Presidio, Texas, is the leader of her TARC team this year.  All three girls have successfully competed in a number of rocketry challenges and have attended the NASA Student Launch Initiative Advanced Rocketry program.

• Team of Girl Scouts Seeking Patent on Prosthetic Hand Device Which Enables a Young Girl to Write. A group of middle school-aged Girl Scouts from Ames, Iowa, including Gaby Dempsey, Mackenzie Gewell, and Kate Murray developed a patent-pending prosthetic hand device, winning them the inaugural Global Innovation Award at the FIRST LEGO League competition, beating out nearly 200 other submissions.  Their invention was in response to the need of a little old girl in Duluth, Georgia, enabling her to write for the first time although she was born without fingers on her right hand.  Their patent pending BOB-1 has earned the girls the Heartland Red Cross Young Heroes Award, scholarships at Iowa State University College of Engineering, recognition on the Floor of the Iowa and the US House of Representatives, and the title of finalists for the 2011 Pioneer Hi-Bred Iowa Women of Innovation Awards.

• Teenage CEO Inventing Dissolvable Sugar Packets to Reduce Waste. Hayley Hoverter, a 16 years old student from Downtown Business Magnet High School in Los Angeles, California, won first place at the 2011 Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s National Challenge for her idea for patent-pending ecologically conscious dissolvable sugar packets.  Hayley, now CEO of Sweet (dis)SOLVE, started her business as a part of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE’s) business plan competition.

In addition to the exhibiting teams, student winners invited to White House Science Fair include:

• Jayme Warner, 11^th grade
  Intech Collegiate High School, North Logan, UT
  Dupont Challenge Science Essay Competition Sr. Division 1^st place winner
• Michelle Woods, 10^th grade
  Waubonsie Valley High School, Aurora, IL
  DuPont Challenge Science Essay Competition Jr. Division 1^st place winner
• Jessica Steinort, 8^th grade
  Scarborough Middle School, Scarborough, ME
  DuPont Challenge Science Essay Competition Jr. Division 3^rd place
• Shireen Zaineb, 8^th grade
  Milwaukee Montessori School, Milwaukee, WI
  National STEM Video Game Challenge Playable Game – Gamestar Mechanic category winner
• Kevin Burdge
  Heidelberg High School, Germany DoDDS-Europe, MIT
  DoD Junior Science and Humanities Symposium
• Elmer Tan, 17
  John P. Stevens High School, Edison, NJ
  Silver Medal winner, International Chemistry Olympiad
• Ziyuan Liu and Cassee Cain, 12^th grade
  Oak Ridge High School, Oak Ridge, TN
  Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology
• Kyra Smith, 13
  Stuart-Hobson Middle School, Washington DC
  Student Spaceflight Experiments Program
• Suzan Shalhout, 7^th grade
  O.W. Holmes Elementary-Middle School, Detroit, MI
  DoD STARBASE program
• Priyen Patel, 11^th grade
  Sussex Technical High School, Seaford,DE
  Media Award, 2011 U.S. National BioGENEius Challenge
• Naomi Shah, 11^th grade
  Sunset High School, Portland, OR
  Google Science Fair 15-16 age group winner
• Lauren Hodge, 14
  Dallastown Area High School, York, PA
  Google Science Fair 13-14 age group winner
• Gavin Ovsak, 17
  Duke University, Hopkins, MN
  Google Science Fair finalist
• Anthony Edvalson, 13
  Mont Vernon Village School, Mont Vernon, NH
  Christopher Columbus Awards winning team member
• Cassandra Lin and John Perino
  Westerly, RI
  Christopher Columbus Awards winning team members
• Abhinaya Gunaseker, Fatima Elsheikh, Lauren Meyer, 9^th grade
  John F. Kennedy High School, Cedar Rapids, IA
  National Engineers Week Future City Competition, National Best Research Essay award
• Audrey Thimm, 12^th grade
  Bishop Kelly High School, Boise, ID
  Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam member
• Travis Ramsey, 10^th grade
  Eureka Spring High School, Eureka Spring, AR
  Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam member
• Baxter Bond, 12^th grade
  Tununak, AK
  Alaska Summer Research Academy / MIT Edgerton
• Eta Atolia, 18
  Rickards High School, Tallahassee, FL
  Intel Science Talent Search finalist
• Emily Chen, 18
  Brownell-Talbot School, Omaha, NE
  Intel Science Talent Search finalist
• Tanner Coppin, 19
  Hankinson High School, Hankinson, ND
  Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finalist
• Taide Ding, 17
  Oxford High School, Oxford, MS
  Intel International Science and Engineering Fair finalist
• Michelle Hackman, 18
  John L. Miller Great Neck North High School (currently Yale University), Great Neck, NY
  Intel Science Talent Search 2^nd place
• Coleman Kendrick, 13
  Los Alamos Middle School, Los Alamos, NM
  Broadcom MASTERS 2011 finalist
• Scott Wu, 9^th grade
  Baton Rouge, LA
  2011 MATHCOUNTS middle school champion
• Alex Kimm, 9^th grade
  Brookings, SD
  2011 MATHCOUNTS finalist
• Zachary Farr
  St. Albans, VT
  2011 MATHCOUNTS finalist
• Arimus Wells, 12^th grade
  Fountain-Fort Carson High School, Fountain, CO
  National Math and Science Initiative APTIP
• Kayla Burriss, 14
  East Mecklenburg High School, Charlotte, NC
  National Academy Foundation
• Tayo Ogunmayin, 14, and Eva Perez, 14
  Berkeley High School and Envision High School, Berkeley, CA and Oakland, CA
  Girls Inc. InnovaTE^3
• Victoria Xia, 11^th grade
  Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Vienna, VA
  2011 USA Mathematical Olympiad; 2011 China Girls Math Olympiad
• Jacen Sherman, 15
  Springbrook High School, Silver Spring, MD
  Microsoft Kodu Cup First Prize
• David Hayden
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, originally from AZ
  Microsoft Imagine Cup Team Note-Taker member
• Noor Muhyi, 18
  Las Cruces High School, Las Cruces, NM
  NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing 2012 National Winner
• Travis Sylvester, 18
  Greybull High School, Greybull, WY
  Wyoming State Science Fair
• Landon Fisher, 12^th grade
  Rockwall Heath High School, Heath, TX
  2011 Team America Rocketry Challenge National Champion team member
• Steven Colon, 17
  New York, NY
  Posse Foundation