Two Navy officers with Naval Service Training Command (NSTC) represented the U.S. Navy at the 2015 Badger State Science Fair which was held at the Milwaukee School of Engineering on March 21.

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Keppen and Lt. Daniel Golde, who are stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes with NSTC, made the hour-long trek to Wisconsin to serve as judges for the event.

"Lt. Golde and I were fascinated by the quality and difficulty of the projects," said Keppen. "These high school students are extremely intelligent, dedicated, and passionate about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and truly represent the best of Wisconsin."

Each year, the Office of Naval Research sponsors multiple awards for the projects that best display a scientific approach, originality, thoroughness, ingenuity, creativity, clarity, skill and student advancement in science. Projects are critically evaluated by dozens of judges and the students are also interviewed to determine what they learned about the subject and the process.

This year the Best of Fair awards went to the projects entitled: "A Study of Spanwise Modifying Incomplete Spiroid Winglets" and "Myocardial Regeneration Potential of Human Cardiomyocytes Generated from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells."

Since incorporation in 2001, the Wisconsin Science Education Foundation (WiSEF) has focused on expanding original science research efforts in high school-aged students and providing the opportunity to compete. The primary program of WiSEF, the Badger State Science and Engineering Fair (BSSEF) and is open to all Wisconsin high school students.

From 1955-1999, Wisconsin students participated in the Southeastern Wisconsin Science & Engineering Fair. At that time, students advanced to the National Science & Engineering Fair (est. 1950) which graduated to the International Science & Engineering Fair (ISEF) in 1959. Now, more than 1500 students from 51 countries compete for scholarships, prizes, and opportunities to work with the most prestigious of companies and laboratories in the world.

In addition to promoting increased participation in the BSSEF, WiSEF seeks to create a system of regional science fairs to encourage students to participate in multiple levels of competition. Student winners from the regional fairs and the state fair have an opportunity to progress to the International Science & Engineering Fair to compete.

The Wisconsin Science Education Foundation (WiSEF) is a 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire enthusiasm for science research among Wisconsin students.

NSTC oversees 98 percent of initial officer and enlisted accessions training for the Navy, as well as the Navy's citizenship development program. NSTC includes Recruit Training Command (RTC), the Navy's only boot camp; NROTC at more than 160 colleges and universities across the country; Officer Training Command (OTC) in Newport, R.I.; NJROTC and Navy National Defense Cadet Corps (NNDCC) citizenship development programs at more than 600 high schools worldwide.

For more information about NSTC, visit: www.netc.navy.mil/nstc/ or visit the NSTC Facebook pages at www.facebook.com/navalservicetraining/.

For more news from Naval Service Training Command, visit: www.navy.mil/.