Ellicott City, Md., 11th grader Martin Meister recognized for his seagrass density project, will represent Maryland in 2024 International BioGENEius Challenge
STEM education nonprofit Learning Undefeated announced today that Martin Meister, a junior at Centennial High School in Ellicott City, Maryland has won the 2024 Maryland BioGENEius Challenge.
Together with the Biotechnology Institute, Learning Undefeated hosts the Maryland BioGENEius Challenge, a rigorous international competition for talented high school students in grades 9-12. As the 2024 Maryland BioGENEius finalist, Mesiter will represent the state at the At-Large BioGENEius Challenge later this year. For the fourth consecutive year, the BioGENEius Challenge tracks include the Global Healthcare Challenge in medical biotechnology, the Global Sustainability Challenge in agricultural biotechnology, and the Global Environmental Challenge in industrial/environmental biotechnology.
Meister’s project entitled “Quantifying Seagrass Density Using Sentinel-2 Data and Machine Learning,” stresses the importance of seagrass in coastal ecosystems. Human activity has been destroying seagrass populations and there is an urgent need to monitor the seagrass consistently. Seagrass has been closely monitored in the Chesapeake Bay Program since 1970 using air photos and ground samples. The goal of his project was to replace those methods with remote sensing data and machine learning to predict seagrass populations consistently.
Runners-up in the 2024 Maryland BioGENEius Challenge were:
- 2nd place – Mahilan Guha
- 3rd place – Holly Zhang
