YRI Fellows have qualified for Regeneron ISEF 2026, won 1st place at the Mercer Science & Engineering Fair held at Princeton University, qualified for state, reached the IRIS National Fair as national finalists, and won Best Oral Presentation at an IEEE conference in Tokyo. Across the program, 73% of YRI Fellows place at science competitions.
This page collects those results in one place, with the student's first name and last initial, the competition, and what the research was about. Each result links to the full story, so you can see how a student who started with no research experience ended up on stage.
Why YRI Fellows do well at science fairs
Science fair judges reward the same things peer reviewers do: a clear question, original data, sound methods and a student who can explain every choice. That is exactly what a YRI Fellowship project is built to produce.
Each Fellow works one-on-one with a PhD mentor in their own field. They find the question together, design the study, collect original data and write the paper. By the end, the student has a finished piece of research and can defend every line of it in an interview. That is the raw material of a winning fair entry.
The results below show it. Several of these students entered their first competition with a project they built at YRI.
Regeneron ISEF 2026 qualifiers
Qualifying for Regeneron ISEF means winning your way through a regional or national fair first. Two YRI Fellows qualified for ISEF 2026 with research on the same hard problem: classifying gravitational waves without expensive hardware.
Mubashir S.: from zero research experience to ISEF 2026
Mubashir, a student in Karachi, came to YRI passionate about physics and computer science with no prior research experience. Gravitational-wave machine learning normally needs $50,000 or more a year in GPU infrastructure. He trained a lightweight network of roughly 92,000 parameters on LIGO-Virgo detector data using free Google Colab, then built a peer-to-peer training framework so that 100 standard laptops can match a single NVIDIA V100 GPU.
The result: Best of Subject Category at the National Science and Engineering Fair Pakistan 2025, and qualification to represent Pakistan at Regeneron ISEF 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. Read Mubashir's story, or the longer write-up in Mubashir's ISEF 2026 journey.
Jayant K.: ISEF 2026 qualifier
Jayant qualified for ISEF 2026 with a low-resource CNN for gravitational-wave classification. His mentor helped him scope an ambitious idea into a project he could finish, and he took it to the same international stage as Mubashir.
1st place wins and state qualifiers
Shaswat S.: 1st place at the Mercer Science & Engineering Fair at Princeton
Shaswat was a 10th grader at West-Windsor Plainsboro HS South with no research or publication experience. With his YRI mentor, he built a machine learning framework that predicts stem cell differentiation from RNA sequencing data and shows which genes matter most in a cell's fate. The work has implications for regenerative medicine and diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease.
He won 1st place at the Mercer Science & Engineering Fair, held at Princeton University. Read Shaswat's story.
Avyay G.: 1st place and state qualifier in 9th grade
Avyay started as a 9th grader with no prior research. He built an AI pipeline that predicts when respiratory disease will begin from air pollution exposure and genetic risk, comparing five survival models with explainable AI. His model showed 28% faster disease onset with high pollution exposure.
At the Twin Cities Regional Science Fairs in March 2026, he won 1st place in his category, earned 4 ribbons, took the USMA Special Award for Best Use of SI Units, and qualified for the state science fair.
"YRI helped me integrate air pollution data with genetic susceptibility to build AI models predicting respiratory disease risk. My research won 1st place at my science fair, something I never imagined achieving in 9th grade."
Avyay G., YRI Fellow
Read Avyay's story, or the longer Avyay G. case study.
Ishaan M.: state science fair finalist
Ishaan arrived as a first-time researcher interested in chemistry and sustainability. He designed a hybrid catalyst system that turns waste tires into cleaner fuel, published it at an IEEE conference, and became a state science fair finalist. Read Ishaan's story.
Ayaan R.: 3rd place, plus an IEEE paper
Ayaan, a 10th grader with no research or publication experience, borrowed techniques astronomers use to pull faint signals out of noise and applied them to brain scans. His models detected Alzheimer's patterns with 88.9% accuracy. The work was published in IEEE and won 3rd place at his science fair.
"I applied astronomy techniques like pulsar timing to detect Alzheimer's from brain scans, achieving 88.9% accuracy. YRI helped me bridge astrobiology and neuroscience, and I won 3rd place at my science fair."
Ayaan R., YRI Fellow
National finalists: the IRIS National Fair
The IRIS National Fair is India's route to Regeneron ISEF. Two YRI Fellows reached it as national finalists in 2026:
- Aditya K., for research on RIS-assisted vehicular massive MIMO, a wireless communications problem.
- Thashwin S., for research on sustainable AI in cyber-physical systems.
Awards at international research conferences
Science fairs are not the only stage where judges score student work. YRI Fellows also present to rooms of university researchers.
Aditya S.: Best Oral Presentation at IEEE AAIML 2026 in Tokyo
Aditya was a junior at Cupertino High School with no prior research. With his YRI mentor he built a two-step neural network that spots failures in large cloud systems, trained on IBM Cloud telemetry. It caught 16 of 25 anomalies, against 6 of 25 in earlier research. He presented at IEEE AAIML 2026 in Tokyo and won Best Oral Presentation in his session.
"Presenting at an international IEEE conference in Tokyo was surreal. Winning Best Oral Presentation for my session made the trip even more special. I would like to thank my research mentor, Vamika, for her guidance throughout this journey."
Aditya S., YRI Fellow
The paper is on IEEE Xplore. Read Aditya's story.
Ashwajit W.: oral presentation at BICA 2026 in Mexico
Ashwajit was selected for oral presentation, the highest presentation tier at the conference, and delivered a 15-minute talk with questions from the room at BICA 2026 in Merida, Mexico. Reviewers scored his work 5 out of 5 for novelty and significance. Read Ashwajit's story.
Shivi K.: the only presenter under 25
Shivi had an oral presentation and publication accepted at the 2026 Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, as the only presenter under 25, and was then invited to give a research talk at Yale School of Medicine.
Global challenges and research competitions
- Aarush M., 3rd place worldwide, Project Green Challenge 2025. Selected as 1 of 14 global finalists from more than 8,000 participants, he presented at the PGC Final Summit in San Francisco and won a $500 award. Read Aarush's story.
- Rishik A., semifinalist, International STEM Research Challenge 2026. Selected from 850 applicants worldwide as a 9th grader, for research on defending AI agents against prompt injection. The same project was accepted at an IEEE conference. Read Rishik's story.
- Ansh K., MIT URTC. Ansh presented at the MIT Undergraduate Research Technology Conference and was nominated for the Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, India's highest honour for young achievers. Read Ansh's story.
What these results have in common
Look at where these students started. Mubashir, Shaswat, Avyay, Ayaan and Aditya S. all began with no research experience. None of them needed a lab, a perfect GPA or a research idea before applying. What they had was a PhD mentor who met with them every week, and a project built to the standard a judge or reviewer expects.
That is the YRI model: start with a question your child cares about and finish with research strong enough to compete. For more on how the judging works, see our guides on how ISEF is judged and ISEF explained for parents.
Want the full competition season run for your child?
The Research Fellowship gives your child the research. For families who want every competition worth entering chosen, prepared and run with them start to finish, the Top 1% Profile adds the full competition season, alongside multiple publications, a filed patent and a venture. It takes 8 families a year. Compare both on the tuition page.
FAQ
Have YRI Fellows qualified for Regeneron ISEF?
Yes. Mubashir S. and Jayant K. both qualified for Regeneron ISEF 2026. Mubashir qualified to represent Pakistan in Phoenix, Arizona.
What percentage of YRI Fellows place at science competitions?
73% of YRI Fellows place at science competitions.
Does my child need a science fair background to join YRI?
No. Several of the winners on this page, including Avyay G. and Shaswat S., had no research experience before YRI.
Can a YRI paper also be a science fair project?
Yes. Ayaan R. published his research in IEEE and won 3rd place at his science fair with it. Ishaan M. published at IEEE and became a state science fair finalist.
What grades do YRI winners come from?
The results above include 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders, and YRI welcomes curious students from middle school up.
Start your child's winning project
Every result on this page started with one application. The Research Fellowship is 10 weeks of one-on-one work with a PhD mentor for $2,997, or 3 payments of $999, settled only after acceptance. Applying is free, there are no essays, and the decision comes within 48 hours.
Apply to the YRI Fellowship and give your child research that judges remember. See every paper on Published Work, every story in Student Stories, or read what YRI is.
