The 2019 result
The Science Talent Search's list of winners places Ana Humphrey first in 2019, with Alexandria, Virginia as her home town. That entry is the anchor of everything on this page.
The research record behind this page describes her field as astronomy and mathematics. The sources read here do not confirm a project title or subject, so the field is noted as unverified rather than stated as fact. Where a page cannot describe the work, saying so is the only honest option.
What the competition is
Founded in 1942, the Science Talent Search is described as the oldest and most prestigious research-based science competition for American high school seniors. It ran as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search until 1998, as the Intel competition from 1999 to 2016, and has been sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals since 2017.
Roughly 2,000 projects are submitted each year. The top 300 scholars receive $2,000 each, and 40 finalists are chosen from them. First place is worth $250,000, the largest award available to an American high school student for scientific research.
The scale of a finalist field
The competition publishes its numbers year by year, and a nearby edition shows the shape of the task. In 2021 the 40 finalists were selected from 1,760 entrants on the strength of their projects' scientific rigour and their potential as future scientists and leaders.
Every finalist that year received at least $25,000, with the top ten awards running from $40,000 to $250,000. Finalists are questioned by judges on the research itself rather than assessed on a written submission alone, which is what distinguishes the final week from the entry process.
Why first place carries weight
The competition's reputation rests on its alumni. Thirteen former entrants have received Nobel Prizes, twenty have won MacArthur Fellowships and eleven have been awarded National Medals of Science, and many others have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences or the National Academy of Engineering.
Winning the year's first place therefore places a student in a line that stretches back to 1942. The winners in the years that followed Humphrey include Yunseo Choi in 2021, for work on two-sided matching in infinite markets, and Christine Ye in 2022.
What is documented - and what is not
Firm: the placing, the year, the home town, and the structure and history of the competition. Those come from the encyclopaedia record of the winners and from Society for Science's own published finalist information.
Not documented here: the project. The Society for Science finalist page for 2019 that the research record cites returned an error when checked for this page, and no press coverage of the project was consulted. No birth year, age, school, photograph or quotation appears in the sources used here, and nothing is known from them about what Humphrey has done since 2019.
Watch: Ana Humphrey on camera
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cannan Huey-You | United States | Presenting research on a Milky Way gas cloud at the American Astronomical… | Age 11 |
| Franklin Wang | United States | He pointed a machine-learning model at public telescope archives and six u | Age 17 |
| Ana Humphrey | United States | First place, 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search | — |
| Pranav Sivakumar | United States | Two years after losing a spelling bee on cyanophycean, he was hunting lens | — |
| Wolf Cukier | United States | Spotting TOI 1338 b, TESS's first circumbinary planet | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- First place in the 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search (Wikipedia winners list)
- Listed with the home town Alexandria, Virginia
- The competition dates from 1942 and its first-place award is $250,000
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No project title or description confirmed; the official 2019 finalist page returned an error when checked
- The astronomy and mathematics description comes from the research record, not from a source read here
- No published birth year, age, school or later activity
Questions people ask about Ana Humphrey
What is Ana Humphrey known for?
Taking first place in the 2019 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the oldest research-based science competition for American high school seniors.
What was her project about?
The sources read here do not confirm it. The research record behind this page gives her field as astronomy and mathematics, and the official finalist page for 2019 no longer resolves.
How much is first place worth?
$250,000, the largest award in the competition.
Where is she from?
Alexandria, Virginia, according to the winners list.
How old is Ana Humphrey?
No source used here gives an age or birth year. The competition is open to American high school seniors.
How many students compete?
About 2,000 projects are submitted each year. The top 300 scholars receive $2,000 each and 40 finalists go through to the final judging.
Is Ana Humphrey on Wikipedia?
There is no article devoted to her. She appears in Wikipedia's list of Science Talent Search winners.
Where is Ana Humphrey now?
Nothing after the 2019 competition appears in the sources used here.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Ana’s story?
In which year did Ana Humphrey win the Science Talent Search?
What is the first-place award?
Which city is she listed from?
Sources
- Regeneron Science Talent Search — Wikipedia, n.d.
- Regeneron Science Talent Search 2021 Finalists — Society for Science, 2021
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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