This years Butwin Elias Science and Technology Award was held despite students being remote for a majority of the year due to the global pandemic. Because of these challenging circumstances we only received a single project and it won our first place prize of $1,500.
First Place ($1,500): Chariot Game
The first place winner of the 2019-2020 BEST award was Michael Andrews with his chariot game. The instructable that details his winning project can be found here.
Speech Given at the Awards Ceremony
Meyers had an in person awards ceremony this year and Adam Iseman gave this speech during it:
I’m Adam Iseman and I’m here to present the Iseman Foundation awards which include both the Butwin Elias Science and Technology Award (or the BEST award) and the Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Awards. These awards require students to complete an extracurricular project in either STEM or the Arts, document it and submit it online. Students are free to pick something that they are excited about and interested in and explore it further. A panel of alumni judges then evaluates them and we give everyone that applied at least a participation award of $50 and higher cash prizes for 5th thru 1st place. This is the 9th year we are giving out the BEST award and the 5th year that we are giving out the Arts award. What a year this has been too…
This past year has been anything but normal and really the only reason why we are able to be here today is because of science. Within the last year a completely new and deadly virus has been isolated, its genetic sequence has been decoded and then a cure for it has been assembled from scientist manipulating the very basic building blocks of life to help our bodies effectively fight off an otherwise deadly disease. For all of this progress to have happened in around nine months is an absolutely amazing scientific achievement. By comparison the last time that we had a pandemic of this same scale was in 1918 a decade or so before this school was built and epidemiology was still in in its infancy. In 1918 we were never able to analyze or even attempt to cure the strain of influenza that was running rampant and it just killed people until it had either killed you or you were lucky enough to recover from it. Had we taken this same course with COVID 19 rather than the about 600,000 deaths we have experienced in the US we would be on track for somewhere on the order of 2-6 million deaths depending on how overwhelmed our hospital systems got. In just about every way I’d much rather be living through the COVID 19 pandemic where we have science on our side than in 1918 where doctors were basically helpless in the face of this disease.
Additionally, the first radio broadcasts in the US were not started until around 1920 so people going through the 1918 pandemic were not even able to listen to the radio as a distraction. They definitely were not able to zoom with friends, call distant relatives or binge watch Netflix for hours on end. I honestly don’t know how they stayed sane through a pandemic without access to the arts and entertainment that we enjoy today. While the scientific achievements that we have made in the last 100 years are extremely impressive the amount of Art that people can access instantaneously is also another reason why I’d much rather be dealing with COVID 19 than living through 1918 pandemic.
Because of the tremendous importance of science and the arts to our everyday life I’m extremely excited to offer these awards each year that hopefully help to inspire the next generation of scientists and artists that will continue to make our world a better place to live in. And so, lets actually get to presenting this year’s awards!
Because of how difficult this year was on the STEM program here at Meyers we only received a single applicant for this year’s BEST award. And so, the winner of the 2020-2021 Butwin Elias Science and Technology award who will be receiving a check from the Iseman Foundation for $1,500 for his game that demonstrates the basics of electric propulsion is Michael Andrews!