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"State-of-the-art facial recognition software, bionic body parts for athletes, eco-friendly building materials that save lives: Is this cutting-edge technology developed in a corporate research lab (or by a top-secret government agency)? Nope, these advancements were dreamed up by three incredibly impressive teen girls.\n\nSo let&amp;#39;s meet the high schoolers who made some major waves at last week&amp;#39;s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, shall we? ISEF is affectionately referred to as the Olympics of science fairs since it&amp;#39;s the largest science competition on the planet, and this trio presented their final projects (though &amp;quot;project&amp;quot; seems like way too modest of a word) along with 1,697 other brilliant minds from more than 70 countries.\n\nFirst there&amp;#39;s 15-year-old SoCal native Kalyani Ramadurgam, who designed a computer program that can recognize faces looking away from the camera. Then there&amp;#39;s 16-year-old MacKenzie Grubb, a junior from Florida who invented a mechanical knee that helps soccer players reduce injury risk. And finally, there&amp;#39;s 15-year-old West Virginian Miriam Demasi, who created an affordable and environmentally-sound construction material that also happens to be the perfect foundation for use in earthquake-prone regions.\n\nThe road to ISEF was paved with a whole lot of hard work and a bit of inspiration. MacKenzie, an avid soccer player, was motivated by her own injury and subsequent knee reconstruction surgery. &amp;quot;It took about two months to actually build the model,&amp;quot; she explains of the apparatus that shows the strain on the tendon caused by kicks taken at different positions on the field. &amp;quot;Thinking about how to create a human knee out of wood, hinges, and springs wasn&amp;#39;t an easy task. In one night, I took six trips to Ace Hardware because my knee didn&amp;#39;t turn out proportionally!&amp;quot;\n\nKalyani was deeply affected by the Boston Marathon bombings and the difficulty authorities had in identifying the suspects using blurry, imprecise security video footage. She learned that current software doesn&amp;#39;t recognize faces unless they&amp;#39;re looking at the camera (and are also perfectly lit and recorded via high-resolution), so she created an alternative. &amp;quot;Unlike traditional methods, which only look at the relationships between facial ratios, I combined information from both pil patterns in the pictures and from independent facial features,&amp;quot; she succinctly explains. Her big-deal discovery won the third-place grand prize in the computer science category at ISEF.\n\nEnvironmentalist Miriam actually started out delving into a different project (making windmills to purify water in developing countries) before deciding to design building materials. It took her six months to perfect, but her hard work paid off: She scored the EPA-sponsored Patrick Hurd Sustainability Award at ISEF, which involves a trip to the EPA&amp;#39;s National Sustainable Design Expo and some pretty major scholarships.\n\nYeah, these girls totally rule\u2014not to mention they represent the new wave of women in the male-dominated worlds of science and engineering. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s different being a female because we have to work harder to get our ideas heard,&amp;quot; MacKenzie says. &amp;quot;I think especially in my sports medicine and orthopedic fields of study, women are seen as weak or quiet, but being quiet doesn&amp;#39;t mean incompetent. In fact, being a woman in science shows just how strong we can be.&amp;quot;\n\nMiriam agrees: &amp;quot;Sometimes it feels like there are stereotypes about what fields women should go into\u2014and engineering usually isn&amp;#39;t one of them\u2014but if that&amp;#39;s your passion, then you have to go for it.&amp;quot;\n\nAnd for those who do go for it, there&amp;#39;s a close-knit community of female scientists waiting, especially at ISEF. &amp;quot;We all have a deep appreciation for everyone&amp;#39;s work and the challenges some had to overcome,&amp;quot; Miriam says.\n\n&amp;quot;The support of my female peers is outstanding. We stick together just like girls should,&amp;quot; MacKenzie adds. &amp;quot;A lot of older women came up to me\u00A0at the competition, too. One even said, &amp;#39;I hope my granddaughters grow up to be as amazing and passionate as you are, because it&amp;#39;s people like you who will change the world.&amp;#39;&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/international-science-and-engineering-fair-teen-girls>