Kyra Sedransk, Junior Science and Humanities Symposium finalist (Ohio, 2000) and first alternate to attend the national symposium, only a tenth grader at Hathaway Brown School, has just had her research on heart valves published. From the same school and the same JSHS regional, Ann Lai, a senior, was one of seven young inventors to be inducted into the National Gallery for America's Young Inventors. Ann invented a sensor that measures sulfur dioxide emissions of individual industrial smokestacks.

Eric Klaxton was a participant in New Hampshire Young Inventors' Program from first to fifth grades while at Sandown Central Elementary School. Eric was the first place finisher from his school all five years and won last year's statewide invention celebration among all fifth graders for "Erik's Easy Find Ski Tag," a "LoJack" for skiers. (See interview with Academy Board Chair Sheldon Apsell for the original spark).

Cliff Pickover, Monmouth, N.J. Junior Science and Humanities Symposium finalist, and national symposium (West Point) participant in 1975, went to Franklin and Marshall, and then on to Yale for a Ph.D. in Physics. Since 1982 he has been on the research staff at IBM, the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Dr. Pickover is a prolific inventor with dozens of patents, is the associate editor for several journals, and has published a book a year for the last twenty years on such topics as computers and creativity, art, mathematics, black holes, human behavior and intelligence, time travel, alien life and science fiction. His website www.pickover.com is worth a visit.