SAMMAMISH, Wash. — Christine Ye, a senior from Eastlake High School was crowned the winner of The Regeneron Science Talent Search, a prestigious math and science competition dating back to 1942.
The competition recognizes promising young scientists who are developing ideas that could solve society's most urgent challenges. Ye took home $250,000 in prize winnings.
Ye was chosen out of nearly 2,000 applicants and competed in the finals in Washington D.C. A panel of judges chose her project as the winner of the 2022 competition.
Ye is passionate about space and analyzed gravitational waves emitted from huge collisions between neutron stars and black holes.
“When you have these really massive and powerful objects colliding with each other they actually shake up the whole universe in a way that we can detect here, even billions of light-years away,” Ye said.
By analyzing data gathered at the LIGO gravitational wave observatory, where scientists use data from these waves to measure astronomical objects, she showed that a quickly spinning neutron star could be extra massive, even larger than a typical neutron star, but still smaller than a black hole.
Impressed? So were the judges.
“I can say from first-hand experience that this is only the beginning of a great path forward for our winners, finals and scholars," said George D. Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., Co-founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron.