Alexa Shamus has always loved science and math. It’s not just an interest, it’s a passion. When she first started middle school, she decided to try out doing a science fair project. She got first place in Broward County and an honorable mention for state. After a break during 7th grade, she decided to do another experiment last year, which ended up going even farther than her first. It won first in Broward County and went on to win second in state, allowing her to qualify for nationals. It was a very detailed project measuring how different types of shoes impact the way that people walk. In her experiment, she meticulously measured gait (the manner that someone walks in) and range of motion (the movement potential for a joint to stretch out) for her experiment. “I had ten participants, my peers, walk on the treadmill at a normal walking speed, two point five miles per hour,” she detailed. “I used slow motion video to capture them walking and I took the frame [with] their great toe range of motion to compare the angles.”

Not only did she do well in competitions, she even was interviewed by NBC6 for South Florida about two weeks ago. They asked her questions about her experiment and she told them about the process and her wins. Her interview aired less than a week ago.

Her experiment was in fact so well done that she placed in the top three hundred in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge on September 6th, which is a national and highly competitive contest with over two thousand contestants this year. When asked how she felt after winning the award, she said it was “an amazing achievement and [she was] honored to have received it,” certainly happy with her incredible results.