Congrats to Palmer students at the GVRSF

Posted on by Mr. Liang

This past April 10-12, 2025 was the annual Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair. Along with student projects from across the Lower Mainland, Palmer’s students took part in three days of tours and activities at UBC and presenting their projects for judging. Continuing Palmer’s strong history of science fair results, this year the team of students earned one Honourable Mention, two Silver Medals, one Bronze Medal, and one Gold Medal — in addition to three special awards. This placed Palmer once again as the top Richmond School District school and one of the top 5 public schools in the Greater Vancouver region in combined Junior and Intermediate Division medal counts.

 In the Junior Division, Chantelle Yen won a Silver Medal and the BC Greenhouse Growers Association Award for her project.  Katie Yee also won Silver while Tyrus Chan won a Bronze Medal to round out the Junior Division.

 For grade nine, Allen Xu earned an Honourable Mention (Fourth) while while Yuri Kim and Yolanda Liang won the Verdi Sustainability Award.  After placing first at Palmer, Emma Liu and Dorothy Li’s project to create a kelp-alternative ‘band-aid’ unfortunately did not beat out their competitors in their very tough health science field but aim to be back next year.

Lastly, Grade 10 student Riya Dua won a Gold Medal for the second year in a row, this time for her project exploring the conversion of plastic waste to electricity via microbial fuel cells.  Riya project also won her a SHAD Canada Community Changemakers Prize, and was selected as one of the 14 overall Grand Award Winners. Along with the accolade was an invitation to be part of Team GVRSF and an all expense-paid trip to New Brunswick later in May to compete to the Canada Wide Science Fair!   Riya is the sixth Gold/Grand Award Winner from Palmer to be selected to the nationals in the 16-year history of Palmer’s Science Fair.

Congratulations to all the students and good luck to Riya next month as she shares her research nationally! Let’s cheer her on and stay tuned to hear about how she does!