{"id":362038,"date":"2026-07-05T19:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T19:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/362038\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T19:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T19:21:09","slug":"el-paso-students-earn-recognition-at-isef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/362038\/","title":{"rendered":"El Paso students earn recognition at ISEF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) &#8211;Mia Olivas, Abigail Caguingin, Ivanna Aragon, Ivanna Aragon, Bella Vargas, Marina Itzel Lares-Garcia and Hannah Koh.<\/p>\n<p>For these El Paso students, a science fair project became a trip to the international stage and their scientific research gained international recognition.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We can all agree that there&#8217;s so many problems throughout the world,&#8221; Hannah Koh told ABC-7&#8217;s Olivia Vara during the interview. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like adding a grain of sand to build a sand castle. It&#8217;s such, a lot of people might consider this as like, you&#8217;re not doing much. It&#8217;s just a high school science project&#8230;.being able to start off with a high school science project and develop that into real research and help and fix real world problems is what I think all of our goals are here,&#8221; said Hannah.<\/p>\n<p>These young scientists recently represented the borderland at the International Science and Engineering Fair, or ISEF. It&#8217;s one of the world&#8217;s largest competitions for young scientists.\u00a0They say getting there took months of research, testing\u00a0and preparation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was so much like, ugh, will I make it? Will I not make it?\u00a0But, of course, we ended up making it,&#8221; said Ivanna\u00a0Aragon, another one of the student scientists.<\/p>\n<p>From dogs&#8217;\u00a0paw preferences to skin hydration, these students turned everyday questions into research.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This specific project, since my family has, like, a history of all these skin conditions, it was important for me to, like, understand, like, how these ingredients really affect you, and how it could affect everybody,&#8221; said student scientist, Abigail Caguingin. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t even consider yourself a woman in STEM.\u00a0Consider that you&#8217;re a person in STEM. Don&#8217;t focus on the fact that I might be disadvantaged. Focus on the fact that you can get over that disadvantage and work even harder to surpass any obstacles that you might come to,&#8221; Hannah Koh told ABC-7&#8217;s Olivia Vara during the interview. <\/p>\n<p>These students hope their success inspires more young people to explore STEM. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) &#8211;Mia Olivas, Abigail Caguingin, Ivanna Aragon, Ivanna Aragon, Bella Vargas, Marina Itzel Lares-Garcia and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-362038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}