South Dakota State University’s College of Natural Sciences recently held a competition to create 60-second videos about COVID-19. The college’s students, faculty and staff were invited to enter and the intended audience was fifth grade students, who also served as judges.
Winning the competition was Sarah Engels, a biochemistry major from Ivanhoe, Minnesota, with a piece titled “Working Together by Staying Apart.†Finishing as the runner-up was Abdullah Al Maruf, a physics and mathematics major from Gazipur, Bangladesh, with a piece about 3D-printing PPE.
In third place were biochemistry doctoral students Jennifer Kyeremateng, of Accra, Ghana, and Vivian Osei Poku, of Kumasi, Ghana, with a video full of analogies to help students understand how COVID-19 works.
Engels will use the $2,000 prize to supplement her capstone research with Darci Fink, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Maruf will use the $100 prize to continue the research and design of 3D-printed PPE, along with his team members Ashiqur Rahman, Elizabethann Cook and Mark Malinovskiy and adviser Todd Letcher.
Al Maruf and his team also won the “People’s Choice Award†contest on the college’s Facebook page. The $500 prize will also go toward the 3D-printed PPE.
Tyler Zuschlag, a mathematics and data science major from Black Hawk, was randomly selected from the pool of voters and will receive a $100 gift card to SDSU’s bookstore.
