News Post

St. Joseph’s Academy sophomore Margaret Moe earned a silver medal and junior Katherine Winchester earned honorable mention recognition from the 2020-2021 GENIUS Olympiad. This international high school project competition, hosted by the State University of New York at Oswego, draws more than 1,000 participants each year from all over the world. Because of continued travel and gathering restrictions, this year’s competition was held virtually.

GENIUS Olympiad hosts projects in five general disciplines with an environmental focus: Science, Visual and Performance Arts, Business, Writing and Robotics. The latter was not part of this year’s competition because of the limitations of the virtual environment.

Moe said she enjoyed her Science Fair research project with her mentor, Dr. Adam Melvin, a chemical engineering associate professor with LSU’s College of Engineering. “Being able to win awards at the state fair and at GENIUS Olympiad was amazing, considering that COVID almost ended my project before I could even get started,” Moe said. “Online Science Fair has been great, but I am especially excited to see what it is like in person next spring with my continuation project.”  

Winchester was equally excited. “It’s great to see all our hard work finally come to fruition,” she said. “When I started Science Fair, I didn’t expect to achieve this much. But it turned out to be within reach all along. I’m so grateful for this amazing opportunity.”

Mindy Brodhead Averitt
Communications Director