Kornfeld Simpson ’14 wins $25K award

Next week, Kornfeld Simpson will be awarded her scholarship in Washington, for a robot she built that visually detects chemicals.

“Anna’s design has been adopted by several of my graduate and post-doctoral coworkers,” noted Michael Sailor, a chemistry professor at the University of California, San Diego, who served as Kornfeld Simpson’s research adviser. “This I consider to be an extraordinary achievement.”

This new method could have far-ranging counterterrorism and security applications, allowing for surveillance of areas too dangerous for humans. Previous scanning technologies relied on robots detecting chemicals by their scents.

The Davidson Institute awards scholarships to “profoundly gifted youth” 18 years old or younger in several fields, according to the group’s press release. This year, it will award three $50,000 prizes, nine $25,000 prizes and eight $10,000 prizes.

Kornfeld Simpson, who is currently enrolled in the B.S.E. program and is deciding between computer science and electrical engineering, said she has been involved in robotics since fifth grade.

“I’ve been really captivated by the idea of me being able to contribute to something that can really improve the world or make people’s lives better,” Kornfeld Simpson said.

In her first year of high school, Kornfeld Simpson heard Sailor deliver a talk about nanotechnology and the color-changing chemical sensor chips he had been working with. This inspired her to try incorporating these chips into robots.

Sailor said that upon meeting the teenager, he was “immediately impressed with Anna’s insightful questions and the depth of her understanding.”

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Soon after the talk, Sailor and Kornfeld Simpson started working together. They finished the robot two years later. “We worked until we were able to put it on the ground and see it work,” Kornfeld Simpson explained.

Last summer, Kornfeld Simpson began a new project on computer graphics while at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s prestigious Research Science Institute, something she described as “entirely different” that has given her “a lot to learn.”

Several colleagues there encouraged her to apply for the Davidson Institute fellowship.

“At first I was a bit skeptical — there were all these really brilliant people with all this research and achievements in their field,” Kornfeld Simpson said. “I didn’t really think I could measure up to them.”

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But she decided that it was worth a try, and said she is “absolutely astounded” to have won.

Sailor, however, sees the award as recognition of research prowess he had already come to admire. “Of all the high school students I’ve had the pleasure of working with, I can say confidently that Anna is the most talented, the most independent thinker and the most innovative,” he said. “She was not spoon-fed her project, and the depth and breadth of her intellectual abilities are truly apparent in the outcome.”

Sailor emphasized that Kornfeld Simpson designed and completed the project herself, working past technical obstacles along the way, as he served as a sounding board.

“Anna’s ingenuity and creativity are evident in the result of her project,” Sailor said. “Anna is so sharp — she picks up on things so quickly that you only have to make a minor comment, and she will run with it.”