RICHLAND, Wash.– Hanford High School Student Samuel Wang was given a top 300 nod from a prestigious, national STEM challenge.
When Wang was in 7th grade, he began working on a project that hoped to build-off recent scientific studies that looked at using acoustics for fighting fires.
His twist: artificial intelligence. Wang hypothesized that light and temperature readings from fires could tell automated systems what kind and how much acoustic frequency to use when fighting a fire.
His project title: “Multimodal Acoustic Frequency Modulation for Autonomous Fire Suppression: AI-Enhanced Spatiotemporal Mapping and Fire Dynamics Analysis.”
Wang entered multiple science fairs in the Benton-Franklin area, and since those science fairs are officially recognized by the Society for Science, he was considered for 2025’s Thermo-Fisher Junior Innovators Challenge.
Wang eventually was named in the top 300 for the challenge.
Wang says that companies like Lockheed Martin and similar echelon of research-and-implementation companies pique his interest, and that an enrollment into MIT is a major hope of his.
Now a freshman at Hanford High School, Wang not only focuses on STEM, but also is in jazz ensemble and is running for class president.
Wendy Redfield, Wang’s middle school biology teacher at Enterprise Middle School, says that Wang was always “self-starting” and always looks for the reasons why as opposed to the answers.
Redfield also says that teaching science in a post-AI world has its difficulties, but that the rote knowledge of the students is impressive.
“Intrinsic learning,” in which the student hopes to learn purely for the sake of their own curiosity as opposed to for the end of extrinsic factors like grades or acceptance, is possibly the most important factor in rearing a good student in the current day, something she says Wang exhibits perfectly.
“He always looks for the reasons why, not just the answer,” said Redfield about Wang.
For more information on the Junior Innovators Challenge, you can find their website here.
