SPOKANE — Two Ferris High School seniors earned second place in the Earth and Environmental category, at the International Science and Engineering Fair earlier this month. They competed alongside 1,700 hundred students from 67 countries.
After two years of preparing their project, Teddy Osborne and Anders Thogerson won for their research on how wildfire smoke affects agricultural seeds. They were inspired by Eastern Washington’s wildfire season.
“I’m super proud. I couldn’t have like, dreamt of a better way to end senior year,” Thogerson said.
“We know smoke impacts us, but a lot of people don’t think about how it impacts farms and the agricultural side of things because, I mean, there are millions of people around the world who rely on food and that smoke is damaging these crops,” Osborne explained.
Both students will attend the University of Washington this fall. They plan to continue their research.
“What we want to do in the future is make a seed that can resist the effects of the wildfire smoke so they can help farmers, agricultural workers all over the place, not just in the Pacific Northwest,” Thogerson said.
Students in Eastern Washington have only earned a category award at this competition one other time, in 2022.
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