Kingston students flexed their scientific muscles in Edmonton

The five represented Frontenac Lennox and Addington at the Canada-Wide Science Fair.

It was a successful run for five aspiring Kingston scientists.

The students representing the Frontenac Lennox and Addington Science Fair were taking part in 2026 Canada-Wide Science Fair last week in Edmonton.

The big winner among the group was Liam Desre of Kingston Secondary School. He won the Best Project Award - Discovery for ?CDM+S – Thermodynamic Cosmology: Simulating the Universe's Expansion Without Dark Energy, which explored an alternative cosmological model capable of reproducing the observed expansion of the universe without requiring dark energy.

He will now represent Canada at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists 2026 in Kiel, Germany.

In addition, Desre also earned a Platinum Excellence Award and a Gold Excellence Award in the Intermediate Division, as well as the Aerospace Challenge Award, which included a $750 cash prize and recognizes the top Intermediate project in the Aerospace Challenge category. 

Calvin Park Public School's Ryan Varma won the Gold Excellence Award in the Junior Division for C-Strik: AI-powered Precision Medicine Tool for Breast Cancer. He also earned the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association Award and Youth Can Innovate Award each accompanied by a $500 cash prize.

The system is designed to facilitate personalized treatment decisions for breast cancer patients.

Shail Patel presented NeuroSight: Bridging Oculomic and Acoustic Features for Multi-Disease Prediction via Deep Learning. The handheld measurement device has an integrated machine-learning model that combines eye and voice biomarkers to improve early Parkinson and other neurodegenerative disease detection.

The LCVI student received a Bronze Excellence Award and the S.M. Blair Family Foundation Award which came with a $1,000 cash prize. 

Fellow LCVI student Anjali Patel received a Bronze Excellence Award for her presentation of Using Voice Biomarkers to Enable Machine Learning-Based Diagnosis of Speech-Related Disorders. It investigates how machine learning can facilitate the diagnosis of some respiratory, speech, and neurological disorders.

Alexandria Xu of Calvin Park Public School presented Can AI be the Subject of Social Experiments?, an investigation into whether AI can provide human-like behaviour to serve as a participant in social science research.

The five students also took part in the regional science fair in March at Queen's University. 

Story by Ken Hashizume