FCPS Boasts Two in Junior Innovators’ Top 300

Society for Science has announced the Top 300 students in the 2026 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge — the nation’s premier science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competition for middle schoolers. Making the cut were Winburn seventh grader Sarah Nur Islam and Paul Laurence Dunbar High freshman Aarav Kumar Tibrewal, who attended Beaumont Middle when the contest began. They were selected from 1,997 entrants in 34 states, Puerto Rico, and Guam. 

Thirty finalists will be announced Sept. 16, and they will advance to compete for more than $100,000 in awards, including the $25,000 Thermo Fisher Scientific ASCEND Award. 

Sarah hopes to advance with the project “Headache Halt: A Behavioral Forecasting Approach to Predicting and Preventing Headaches” and Aarav with “Analyzing the Efficiency of Root-Finding Algorithms on Multi-Application Polynomials.”