WASHINGTON, September 18, 2026 – Standing before a room full of scientists, Jack and Henry Grover didn’t look like typical fire safety experts. The two brothers are eighth-graders from Riverside, California. However, it is the special sprayable hydrogel they created to inhibit the reignition of wildfires that won them a place among thirty middle school students vying for recognition in top youth STEM competitions.
The official lineup for the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge landed this week. Selected from among almost 2,000 candidates throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, these 30 finalists are working on such varied projects as microplastic pollution and micro-earthquake prediction.
And this matters because middle school is usually where interest in science drops off a cliff.
According to organizers at the Society for Science, the program serves about 60,000 young minds every year through the local fair network. Only the top ten percent proceed to compete nationally.
“Every year, these students remind us that meaningful science starts with caring deeply about a problem,” said Karen Nelson, Chief Scientific Officer at Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Their passion and bold thinking make us optimistic about the future.”
Myreen Ahsan is a student at Friendswood, Texas. She is an eighth grader whose project involved screening over 10 million small molecule compounds that targeted frontotemporal dementia using machine learning models. There is also Andrew Sun-Zhuang from Shoreline, Washington, who developed a portable pitching machine driven by AI.
Here is the most interesting part: in spite of the declining funding for laboratory materials in public schools, two-thirds of this year’s final participants study in public educational institutions. They rely on elementary equipment, open-source code, and just determination.
At the end of October, all the finalists gather in the capital city of the country. They will not only demonstrate their project display boards but also be tested in design competitions in order to assess their critical thinking and communication skills. More than $100,000 in educational grants is available, including the prestigious ASCEND Award worth $25,000.
It’s easy to dismiss youth science fairs as baking-soda volcanoes and poster board. But when 13-year-olds are simulating aftershock dangers by applying neural networks, the gap between school assignment and actual invention is blurred.
They do not need permission to solve large-scale issues. They are already doing that.
