Umatilla Middle School Student Wins Top Honors And Four South Lake Students Also Receive Special Awards

Umatilla Middle School student Alexandra “Lexie” Clow, wins top honors at the state science fair.  South Lake students Brooke Buchanan, Gray Middle School; Ryan Sanders, Imagine South Lake Charter; Sophia Boardman; Imagine South Lake Charter; Victoria Usrey, Windy Hill Middle School were also award winners.

Alexandra “Lexie” Clow, a 7^th grade student at Umatilla Middle School, won top honors in the recent State Science and Engineering Fair of Florida for a device she created to help keep children from dying, forgotten in hot cars.

She won 1^st place in the Junior division for the Engineering category; a $250 cash award from the Florida Engineering Foundation; the $500 cash Dr. Neilson Ying Scholars Grand Award; certificate and nomination packet from Broadcom Masters, and Best in Fair for the Junior Division in Physical Science!

More than 900 students participated in the three-day event at the R. P. Funding Center in Lakeland. Participants had previously won at the local and regional levels.

Lexie’s project, “Forgotten Baby Syndrome – Year 2,” focused on Pediatric Vehicular Heatstroke, which claims the lives of about 40 children every year when they are left behind in hot cars. Last year, she engineered a device to decrease the occurrence of these types of deaths and earned 3^rd place in the statewide competition. The device detects weight in a baby car seat and ambient temperature then sets off an alarm if a child may have been left behind in a hot car.

She continued her research for this year’s fair and is now seeking a patent for the device she created. She has started a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the fees.

Other Special Award winners are listed below: