This year, for the first time in nearly three decades, three students from Sweetwater Union High School District competed in the prestigious Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair — and one of them won an award there.
Ihan Sung, 17, now a senior at Eastlake High School, won fourth place this spring for building a device to create ammonia, a key component in the production of most fertilizers, but one that generally involves a very difficult and expensive process to create.
The usual method, called the Haber-Bosch process, can require pressure of 150 to 200 bars and temperatures of around 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and drains a lot of electricity. So ammonia is generally produced in countries where crude oil is plentiful and cheap.
Sung wanted a method that would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
So he made a device — with the help of silicone, polycarbonate tubing and a 3-D printer he’d gotten for his 14th birthday — to capture nitrogen in the air and create ammonia in a smaller-scale process.
“The device circulates filtered atmospheric nitrogen along with hydrogen from electrolysis,” the fair website explains. “Low-pressure glow discharge under magnetic confinement is used to break the nitrogen triple bond and form ammonia with an iron oxide catalyst.”
The contraption may not be able to create large amounts of ammonia needed for large farms, Sung said. “It would be good for smaller orchards and things like that,” he said.
He hadn’t set out to solve problems for small farmers. Rather, he’d found his way to his project based on the process involved: He wanted to work with plasma and vacuum pumps.
“I like to think that the topic doesn’t really matter in the first place — because once you love the science, you think about what you get to work with,” he said.
Ihan Sung with his project at Eastlake High School on Thursday, August 13, 2026, in Chula Vista. (Brandon Pollard / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Ronald Johnathan Wyatt and Giles Albert Del Priore, both 18, took the opposite approach when they embarked on a project to help dementia patients orient themselves in the world.
Both teens have some family experience dealing with memory-related illness. “We both found a problem that we wanted to solve based off of our personal lives,” Del Priore said.
The pair built a device to give people with dementia, including Alzheimer’s, a tool to help them check validated facts when they get confused.
The tool, which relies on artificial intelligence constrained by psychological and computer principles, aims to offer a technological backstop and safe communication for somebody with cognitive impairments. It can also offer relief for overworked caregivers.
It can remind them to take their medications and send videos to their caregiver. And if a person gets confused and makes a factual statement that is false, the device — with information validated by a caregiver — can correct them.
“Seventy percent of a caregiver’s time can be spent taking care of someone who has one of these incredibly involved illnesses, or (hired) caretakers can cost up to $10,000 a month,” said Wyatt. “It’s not affordable for most people we found.”
Wyatt and Del Priore both graduated from Eastlake earlier this year. Now Wyatt has just begun his freshman year at UC Santa Cruz, and Del Priore at the University of San Francisco.
Ronald Wyatt, left, and Giles Del Priore at Eastlake High School on Thursday, August 13, 2026, in Chula Vista. (Brandon Pollard / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
When Sung applies to college later this year, his first choice will be Stanford University, if it offers enough financial aid. But he’s applying mostly to UC schools and thinks UC Berkeley would be an “excellent choice.”
“They have a lot of engineers there that are working already in problems very similar (to the ones) that I’m trying to fix,” he said.
Amanda Williams, a biology teacher who served as their science fair adviser, said the three students’ success with their projects showed that teens don’t have to have a generous budget, special access or professional connections to do great science.
“To do this without any of those resources is quite extraordinary,” she said.
Sung said his project cost him under $100 to create. Wyatt and Del Priore said they designed theirs to be affordable; they spent about $80 on the little computer that ran their AI.
“We’re not that rich,” said Wyatt.
Sung’s recognition in the international fair came after he’d had to miss Sweetwater’s own districtwide science fair — a problem with his device’s seal caused by bubbling silicone had thrown a wrench in his efforts.
He had to figure out “problem after problem after problem,” which Williams pointed out is the “true essence of science.”
But the delay meant he got to serve as a judge in the middle school science fair, an event where all three teens volunteer.
Sung saw it as an opportunity to help the younger students find importance and enjoyment in scientific inquiry. The other students found the experience gratifying, too.
“Every time someone would ask a question or you would see them genuinely intrigued in what they were doing, it made me really happy,” Del Priore said. “I’m expanding my love for science to other people.”