Redmond High School student becomes semifinalist in international science competition

Abel Dagne’s 90 second video focuses on noise cancellation.

18-year-old Redmond High School student Abel Dagne is one of 30 semi-finalists from around the world in the annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge competition.

Established in 2015, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge is a global science video competition that encourages students to create engaging and imaginative videos that demonstrate difficult scientific concepts and theories in the physical and life sciences. This year’s competition attracted over 2,400 applicants.

Dagne’s 90 second video focuses on the constructive and destructive interference of sound waves. Dagne thought when she wanted to get rid of the background noise while driving with her brother. 2022 will be his third year in the competition.

Finalist videos on YouTube and Facebook are eligible to participate in the Popularity Poll Challenge, which runs until September 20th. Likes, positive reactions (like “love”, “haha”, “wow”), and sharing of videos on Facebook and YouTube will be declared top scorers in the 2022 popularity poll.

On September 21st, the Top Scorers and 15 Finalists for the Popularity Poll Regional Categories will be announced. The top scorer across the popularity polls will receive automatic entry into the finalist round.

The winner of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge will receive a $250,000 college scholarship. The science teacher who inspired the winning student will receive a prize of $50,000, and the winning school will receive her $100,000 worth of state-of-the-art science lab.

This year’s semi-finalists created videos on topics as diverse as quantum entanglement, time travel, adaptive immunity, and T-cell therapy. Semi-finalists were drawn from countries such as the United States, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, India, Iraq, New Zealand, the Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa and the United Kingdom.