Siyaa Poddar: The Sensor That Changes Colour for Uranium

Biography

The award

The Society for Science, which runs the fair, published the full 2025 awards list on 16 May 2025. Siyaa Poddar of Arizona College Prep High School appears among the Regeneron Young Scientist Award recipients, with the project code MATS043, placing her entry in the materials science category.

The fair's headline awards that year included the George D. Yancopoulos Innovator Award, the Regeneron Young Scientist Awards, the Gordon E. Moore Award, the Craig R. Barrett Award for Innovation and the Mary Sue Coleman Award. Beneath them sit the category prizes, running from $6,000 for a first award down to $600 for a fourth.

What the project is

The registered title is a full sentence, and it states the work precisely: “Developing a Rapid, Colorimetric Metal Organic Framework (MOF) for Airborne Silica and Uranium Detection: A Novel Approach to Pollutant Monitoring and Health Risk Assessment in Indigenous Communities for Sjogren's Syndrome”.

Colorimetric means the readout is a colour change rather than an instrument reading, which is what makes a sensor usable by someone without a laboratory. A metal-organic framework is a porous crystalline material whose internal surface can be engineered to bind particular substances. Put together, the title describes a material designed to trap the target particles and report their presence visibly and quickly.

What the title claims, and what it does not

The title names two airborne hazards, silica and uranium, a setting, Indigenous communities, and a health question, risk assessment relating to Sjogren's syndrome. It is a statement of intent registered with the fair, not a published paper.

The awards list carries no abstract, no data, no detection thresholds and no account of testing. Nothing in it establishes how well the material performed, whether it was trialled outside a laboratory, or whether the health-risk element was assessed with anyone. What is documented is the design goal and the judges' verdict on the work presented to them.

The fair around it

The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair is the largest pre-college science competition in the world, and 2025 was its seventy-fifth edition. The Society for Science's own headline recorded that teenage scientists took away more than $9 million in awards.

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Finalists reach it by winning affiliated regional fairs, so every project in the hall has already won somewhere else. Awards are given across categories as well as through the named top prizes, which is why the list published on 16 May runs to hundreds of names and why a single entry in it represents a narrow selection from a very large field.

What is documented — and what is not

The firm facts are the award, the fair, the year, the school and the exact project title, all published by the organisation that ran the competition. That is the strongest class of evidence available for a result of this kind.

The gaps are real. The value of her award is not clearly stated in the release as read for this page, and no age, date of birth, home town, photograph or quotation appears in it. There is no follow-up reporting, so nothing here establishes whether the sensor was developed further, tested in the field, or taken up by anyone after May 2025.

Achievement Timeline

Siyaa Poddar — every milestone on this page, in order.

May 2025

The 75th Regeneron International ScienThe 75th Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair is held

16 May 2025

The Society for Science publishes the The Society for Science publishes the full awards list, with more than $9 million awarded in total

2025

Siyaa Poddar is listed among the RegenSiyaa Poddar is listed among the Regeneron Young Scientist Award recipients

Historical Comparison

Person	Country	Milestone	Age / Stat
Sawsan Ahmed	United States	Broward College's youngest graduate, at 12, in December 2021	Age 12
Arvind Mahankali	United States	Won the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee at 13	Age 13
Kerry Close	United States	Won the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee at 13	Age 13
Shania Muhammad	United States	Langston University's youngest graduate, at 15	Age 15
Siyaa Poddar	United States	Regeneron Young Scientist Award, ISEF 2025	—

What is documented — and what is not

✓ Documented

Listed among the Regeneron Young Scientist Award recipients at ISEF 2025 (Society for Science)
School given as Arizona College Prep High School, Arizona; project code MATS043
Full project title published verbatim in the awards release of 16 May 2025

? Unverified, disputed or wrong

The exact value of her award is not clearly stated in the release as read here
No data, detection thresholds or testing results published for the sensor
No age, date of birth, home town, photograph or quotation, and no follow-up reporting

Questions people ask about Siyaa Poddar

What did Siyaa Poddar win?

A Regeneron Young Scientist Award at the 2025 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, for a colorimetric sensor for airborne silica and uranium.

What is a colorimetric MOF sensor?

A metal-organic framework is a porous material engineered to bind specific substances; colorimetric means it signals their presence through a visible colour change rather than an instrument reading.

How much was the award worth?

The release as read for this page does not state a clear value for her award. Category prizes at the fair run from $6,000 for a first award down to $600.