What do Moldy Bread, Bird Calls, & Data Clustering Have in Common?
AFCEA CeVA Presents Six Data Analytics Awards at the Virginia Piedmont Regional Science Fair
To say the next generation of scientists is intelligent would be the understatement of the year.
The AFCEA Central Virginia (CeVA) Chapter Board of Directors attended the 2026 Virginia Piedmont Regional Science Fair (VPRSF) at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) on March 12th — an unexpectedly snowy Thursday in Albemarle County.
More than 100 middle school and high school students came from all over the region to share their knowledge on topics that interested them. Engineering, animal science, micro biology, computer science, and political science were only some of the verticals discussed. These teens and pre-teens brought their all with trifold presentations, binders, displays, and laptops, presenting their experiment-of-choice with confidence and vigor. The team saw presentations on moldy bread, removing microplastics from water, robotic hands, Rubik’s cube completion speed, lighting fatigue, farmland, blood glucose levels, and much more.
The AFCEA CeVA Board of Directors weren’t just their to observe, they had the opportunity to award six certificates to six extraordinary individuals. Five to juniors (middle schoolers) and one to the senior (high schooler) who best utilized data analytics in their studies.
The juniors consisted of diverse studies, requiring different actions in experimenting, tracking, logging, and dissecting the data they obtained. “The Early Bird Gets the Data” was a study done by a seventh grader who took to observing the different species of birds in her very own back yard. She used youtube clips of a bird sound to attract birds, then an app to identify which species she heard. In the months (fall and winter) she persisted with this project, she collected over 1,200 data points, surmising that the temperature outside didn’t alter the birds’ activity too much, but windy days proved more difficult for birds to be out and about.
Each of the five Junior Scientists received $100 for a job well done with data analytics.
For the CeVA Team, the pinnacle of the event, was 11th grader Crystal Feng who created a new way of data clustering, more accurate than any method designed to date. Feng’s method, appropriately titled the “Mutual Nearest Neighbor” (MNN) method is designed to sync a data point to it’s nearest neighboring data point, continuing the process until the clusters are reduced to the desired amount. Using datapoints on identifying letters in handwriting, Feng’s method proved to be 90.7% accurate. Compared to the next most accurate method at 57.4% accuracy, that’s a far cry from current data clustering capabilities such as the Gaussian Mixture Model!
At the end of the day, the students were gathered to PVCC’s theatre where special awards (from sponsors such as AFCEA CeVA, NOAA, The Citadel, NASA, and other organizations) were presented, followed by the VPRSF awards themselves — honorable mentions, third, second, and first place in both Junior and Senior Divisions for each of the categories present.
The students, parents, teachers, volunteers, and friends lit up the room with applause as each winner took to the stage.
AFCEA CeVA was glad to be a part of an event so pivotal to a young scientist / technologist’s future endeavors. Thank you to VPRSF and PVCC for including us in this year’s regional science fair!
| Written by Lauren Cappa
If you wish to sponsor a scholarship for the regional or state fairs, please reach out to the AFCEA CeVA team at the email below.
