Brandon Twp.- For the second year in a row, Jessica Laviolette attended the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. But this time, she brought home a prize.
Laviolette, an 18-year-old senior at Brandon High School, won first place in engineering for her project, ‘Optimizing Ethanol Production Efficiency,? earning a $3,000 cash prize, as well as a $1,000 prize for BHS. She also won a vacuum science award, taking a $500 cash prize at the fair, which was in Indianapolis from May 7-12.
‘I was excited and proud,? says Laviolette of her first-place win. ‘Especially because last year I didn’t do well, because the results weren’t verified.?
This year, Laviolette has been working with Archer Daniels Midland on her patent-pending process, in which she uses vacuum science and a selectively permeable membrane to make ethanol production 100-percent efficient. She has improved the process further from 2005, when she took the grand prize and seven other first-place prizes at the Science and Engineering Fair of Metropolitan Detroit with her project, ‘Rapid Production of Ethanol by Vacuum Process.?
Laviolette repeated as grand-prize winner this year at the Detroit fair, and won another six first-place prizes, including the Weizmann Award, given to the top high school senior at the fair. As the winner of this award, she will study at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel from July 3-28.
Laviolette plans to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall.