Excellence in Science Award Presented to Best of the Best
Our second President & CEO, Dr. Charles N. Kimball helped establish the Greater Kansas City Science and Engineering Fair with the goal of developing and retaining scientific knowledge and expertise in the Midwest. Today, supporting and inspiring students from elementary, middle, and high schools from across the 15-county region, the awards ceremony for the event bears his name. At MRIGlobal, we were proud to continue supporting his vision and were honored to serve as Platinum Presenting Sponsor for the fair’s 72nd consecutive year. This year, more than 25 of our scientists, engineers, and support staff served as event mentors, volunteers, and judges. Through this work, we not only improve the world through our research, but also benefit students from the communities in which we work, play, and live.
New this year, we were excited to award one blue ribbon winner in the Senior Division with the inaugural MRIGlobal Excellence in Science Award. This award recognized the project judged to be the very best of those winning entries. Its goal was to recognize excellence in pursuit of objective, scientific truth and progress.
This year’s winner was Mia Stamos from the Shawnee Mission School District’s Center for Academic Achievements for her project “Characterization of Engineered Chimeric Protein LLHP Repression Through the Induction of DNA Looping.”
This work advances our knowledge of the very fundamentals underlying human and animal health and disease by using cutting-edge techniques and most importantly building logically and systematically on a corpus of prior work, greatly increasing the confidence in the integrity of the data and likely reproducibility of the result. In short, Mia demonstrated talent both as a scientist and as a mentee, attributes that will ensure success in her future studies.
Once again, we were proud to support this group that has given so much to the development of area students who are pursuing an interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and the schools that are developing the brightest minds of tomorrow. We are always looking for scientists, engineers, and staff who are committed to purpose driven work and share our passion for making the world healthier, safer, and more sustainable. We hope these students, with their impressive ideas and research, will help us continue our mission in the future.
Congratulations to all the students and winners of the 72nd Annual Greater Kansas City Science and Engineering Fair! They deserve a large round of applause for their hard work and dedication to their projects, and we look forward to seeing them pursue careers in STEM fields.