Third place, and $150,000
Society for Science lists Crotty third in the 2020 Science Talent Search, behind Lillian Petersen and Jagdeep Bhatia, with an award of $150,000. His school is given as Hickory Hill Academy Homeschool in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which is also his home town.
The full title of his entry is unusually candid about method: An Innovative Hybrid Diffusion Burner Design for NOx Reduction in High Temperature Applications Year Three of an Ongoing Study. Most prize-winning school science is presented as a discovery. This was presented as the third instalment of a programme, which is how engineering research actually proceeds.
The engineering problem
The Society describes the work as designing and building an efficient hybrid gas burner for industrial applications that operates at higher temperatures while emitting 19 per cent less nitrogen dioxide than current burners. That sentence contains the whole difficulty of combustion engineering.
Nitrogen oxides, the family of pollutants written NOx, are not produced by the fuel. They are produced by the heat: above roughly 1,300 degrees Celsius, nitrogen and oxygen already present in ordinary air begin to combine, and the hotter the flame the more of them form. Industrial processes want hotter flames, for melting, forging and firing. Regulators want less NOx, because it drives smog and acid deposition and irritates human lungs. A burner that raises temperature and cuts nitrogen dioxide at the same time is attacking the trade-off itself, usually by controlling how fuel and air mix rather than how much of each is burned.
Home-schooled, and third in the country
The listing records Hickory Hill Academy Homeschool as the school. That detail is worth pausing on, because it cuts against the competition's usual demographic story. The Science Talent Search has often been criticised as a contest won by students with access to university laboratories; a burner rig built and iterated over three years in Muskogee, Oklahoma, does not fit that description.
It also explains the shape of the project. A student without institutional bench access builds something physical, measures it, and improves it across seasons. That is a slower route to a result than a summer in a molecular biology laboratory, and the three-year framing suggests it was taken deliberately.
The 2020 field
The competition drew 1,993 entrants that year and named forty finalists, each guaranteed at least $25,000. The top ten ran: Lillian Petersen ($250,000), Jagdeep Bhatia ($175,000) for algorithms in interactive machine learning, Crotty ($150,000), then Rupert Li, Anaiah Thomas, Katherine St George, Alek Westover, Adriane Thompson, Rohan Wagh and Arjun Neervannan, with tenth place worth $40,000.
Finalists are interviewed in Washington by panels of scientists who test the surrounding field as much as the submitted work. For an engineering entry that means questions about measurement error, repeatability and whether a 19 per cent reduction holds outside the test rig, which is exactly the argument a professional reviewer would make.
Veinte preguntas, ocho minutos de reloj y un percentil medido frente a todos los que la han hecho. Sin registro.
Hacer la prueba de CI →What is documented, and what is not
Firm: Crotty placed third in the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search and received $150,000; he was home-schooled through Hickory Hill Academy Homeschool in Muskogee, Oklahoma; his project was a hybrid diffusion burner cutting nitrogen dioxide emissions by 19 per cent at higher operating temperatures; the entry was the third year of an ongoing study.
Not documented, in the source used here: his age or birth year, what the first two years of the study established, whether the design was patented or licensed, where he studied afterwards, and anything about him since March 2020.
| Persona | País | Hito | Edad / Dato |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brendan Crotty | Estados Unidos | Tercer lugar, Regeneron Science Talent Search 2020 | — |
| Melissa Rey | Estados Unidos | Gran premio, Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge 2008 | — |
| Sara Volz | Estados Unidos | Primer lugar, Intel Science Talent Search 2013 | — |
| Jonah Kallenbach | Estados Unidos | Segundo lugar, Intel Science Talent Search 2013 | — |
| Victor Cai | Estados Unidos | Segundo lugar, Regeneron Science Talent Search 2022 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- Third place and $150,000 at the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search
- Home-schooled through Hickory Hill Academy Homeschool, Muskogee, Oklahoma
- Burner design reported to emit 19 per cent less nitrogen dioxide at higher temperatures
- The entry was year three of an ongoing study
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- Age and birth year are not stated
- What years one and two of the study found is not described
- No record of a patent, licence, university or career after March 2020
Questions people ask about Brendan Crotty
What did Brendan Crotty win?
Third place and $150,000 at the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search.
What did he build?
A hybrid diffusion gas burner for industrial use that operated at higher temperatures while emitting 19 per cent less nitrogen dioxide than existing burners.
Was he home-schooled?
Yes. Society for Science lists his school as Hickory Hill Academy Homeschool in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Why is nitrogen dioxide a problem?
NOx pollutants form from the nitrogen and oxygen in ordinary air when a flame is hot enough, and they contribute to smog and acid deposition. Hotter industrial flames normally mean more of them, which is the trade-off his design attacked.
How old is Brendan Crotty?
No source consulted gives his age or birth year.
Who else placed in 2020?
Lillian Petersen won $250,000, Jagdeep Bhatia took second with $175,000, and Crotty third with $150,000, from a field of forty finalists.
Where is Brendan Crotty now?
Nothing published after March 2020 was found in the sources used for this page.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Brendan’s story?
By how much did Brendan Crotty's burner cut nitrogen dioxide?
Where was he schooled?
What did third place pay in 2020?
Sources
- 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists — Society for Science, 2020-03-11
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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