Announcing our 2023 Semifinalists!

This year, Genes in Space honors 30 semifinalists who contributed outstanding proposals to our 2023 competition. These semifinalists have been issued a challenge: pitch your idea to a lay audience in a 60-second video.

Our reviewers will use these videos, in tandem with the semifinalists' written proposals, to select 10 Honorable Mentions and the 5 Finalists who will compete to launch their projects to space. Honorable Mentions and Finalists will be announced on Monday, May 22nd.

We proudly recognize the following semifinalists:

• Fiona Samson (17) from Troy High School, Troy, MI
• Charlene Chen (16) from Smithtown High School, Saint James, NY
• Jimmy Vu (17) & Stephen Mahanty (17) from Edina High School, Edina, MN
• Celene Sahoo (16) & Lily Wang (15) from Ithaca High School, Ithaca, NY
• Kay Su (16) from Portola High School, Irvine, CA
• Edward Kang (15) & Mythreya Dharani (15) from Bergen County Academies, Hackensack, NJ
• Christina Rasa (18) & Kenny Koch (18) from Tome School in North East, Maryland
• Lauren Stoffel (17) and Logan Ramanathan (17) from The Nueva School, San Mateo, CA
• Kyle Zhou (16) from Solon High School, Solon, OH
• Daniel He (17) from Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY
• Sarina Miller (15) & Vickie Mao (15) from Milton Academy, Milton, MA
• Tina Siu (17) from Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY
• Manas Chan (15) & Taj Chhabra (16) from Hunter College High School, New York, NY
• Lauren Cohn (14) from Walton High School, Marietta, GA
• Manasi Vegesna (16) from Hamilton High School, Chandler, AZ
• Naveen Talla (15) from Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, NY
• David Siniscalco (16) & Mason Yam (16) from Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY
• Claire Tsai (16) from Leland High School, San Jose, CA
• Timothy Cai (16) from Centennial High School, Ellicott City, MD
• Lea Giacchetta (16) from Fossil Ridge High School, Fort Collins, CO
• Francis Zweifler (17) from Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY
• Bridget Liu (16) & Anushka Peer (17) from Los Altos High School, Los Altos, CA
• Michelle Cheon (17) from Fort Lee High School, Fort Lee, NJ
• Qi Zhang (15) from Adlai E. Stevenson High School, Lincolnshire, IL
• Alexander Mihalcea (16) from Eastlake High School, Sammamish, WA
• Rita Chen (16) & Celeb Agyare (15) from Morris County School of Technology, Denville, NJ
• Kevin Zhang and Dongni Luo (17) from Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY
• Isabel Jiang (17) from Crystal Springs Uplands School, Hillsborough, CA
• Rosalyn Chu (16) from Carmel High School, Carmel, IN
• Ananth Jagannath (16) from Adrian Wilcox High School, Santa Clara, CA

The Genes in Space team warmly congratulates all the deserving awardees. We wish you all the best as you undertake your next challenge!