Srimayi Tenali, Michelle Chin, Rashad Abdulla and Sanju Vardhan each won “Best of Show” at the regional science fair held at the Merritt Square Mall on Feb. 16-18. In addition, West Shore students won 115 special and place awards, and 11 other Wildcat competitors are moving on to other competitions as a result.

Science teacher Mary Anderson said the effort paid off.

“There were 14 first-place winners,” she said. “In addition to these there were six second-place winners and 15 third-place winners. These places were out of 22 categories, so we did very well overall. There was about $3,000 awarded in prize money.”

Abdulla and Chin also won a one-week paid trip to Pennsylvania for the national competition.

“I was so surprised when they called my name for first place that I screamed,” said sophomore Andrew Lim, one of the first-place winners. “The girl I was presenting next to had a really good project and was really competitive, so I had figured that she would get first place. When they were announcing the winners both of our names hadn’t been called yet, and I was so disappointed because I thought that I didn’t get an award at all. But obviously that’s not the way it turned out. My whole project was on different protein pigments in bacteria species. Even though I had to give up my time after school and had to work really hard, it was all worth it in the end.”

Those placing first and receiving a bid to state are  Rashad Abdulla, David Anderson, Varun Bansal, Michelle Chin, Margarita Cruz-Sanchez, Timothy Drost, River Grace, William Lemstrom, Andrew Lim, James Oskam, Avi Patel, Brittany Reyes, Srimayi Tenali and Sanju Vardhan.

Second place winners were: Nick Baker, Michael Colucciello, Michaele Garrison, Adam Kline, Sacha Laloo and Michael Thomas.

Third place winners were: Cheyne Angy, Atharva Chopde, Mark Kay, Valerie Kobzarenko, Erica Lobmeyer, Noelle Moore, Huda Naas, Connor Neff, Sohum Patel, Carissa Sage, Andrea Taggart, Bianca Taraschi, Benjamin Velle, Christian Walker and Kyle Wheat.

Fourth-place finishers were Joseph Cowett, Krishna Davda, Samuel Edwards, David Freeman, Trey Hamilton, Samantha Jones, Justin Loomis and Nicholas Saladino (team project), Michelle McCullers, Danielle Miller, Mohammed Naas, Samuel Rawlins, Varsha Sahoo, John Shi, Jade Warn and Ryan Wheat.