JYI's Research Department would like to recognize the following individuals who have been awarded first, runner-up, and honorable mention prizes respectively: Rose Li, Gurmeen Kaur, and Bryan Ngo. Their biographical sketches are available below.

When I first spoke to scientist André Martel, our conversation lasted so long that my laptop batteries died, my tape recorder ran out of space, and it was well over an hour before I got a word in edgewise. Our topic? You couldn’t be blamed for guessing it was some super-thrilling science subject like cosmic collisions, erupting volcanoes or long lost secrets of the dinosaurs. But we actually talked about mussels. Specifically, the taxonomy of mussels.