Ferris seniors place second in world in environmental science competition for research on smoke and agriculture

Sitting at the awards ceremony for the largest international high school science fair in the world this May, Ferris High School students Teddy Osborne and Anders Thogerson were a bit disappointed as the judge read off the fourth-place winners for projects in environmental science.

"If we got a fourth -place award, that'd be sick, that'd be awesome," Thogerson, 17, said of the moment. "But, like, I'm just happy to be there."

Third place was the same, the pair reflecting on the once-in-a-lifetime experience they had during the week in Phoenix, connecting with other young scientists from around the world.

But when the announcer read out that their project, which explored seeds' susceptibility to smoke, placed second in the world for environmental science, the high school seniors "dapped each other up" in celebration.

"It was crazy because we were on stage - like, we won the award. We walk up there. We did a little photo and then we got our medals and stuff, and then we walked back," Osborne, 18, said. "And by the time I sat down, I looked at my phone, I had, like, 20 texts already."

"I had people, like, trying to call me as I'm sitting," Thogerson added. "I'm like, I can't enter a call right now."

The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair is one of the most prestigious research competitions in the world for high schoolers. In 2026, there were a total of 1,383 projects from students in 67 countries, all of whom first qualified through a regional fair. Thogerson and Osborne's project was the second from Eastern Washington to win an ISEF award in the fair's 76 -year history. They received a prize of $2,400.

"These are just great young men who are kind to people, who are hardworking, who lift other people up. And to see them go all the way to the international science fair and get second in the world - it's just like, I'm just so proud of them," Ferris Principal John O'Dell said.

The two students designed and executed a study that exposed hundreds of broccoli, wheat and rice seeds to smoke before comparing their germination successes to nonsmoked seeds. They found that the smoked seeds tended to experience slower germination and growth than nonsmoked, and smoked seeds had more cracks and deposits across their surface when viewed at a microscopic level.

Seeing the summer wildfires across the Pacific Northwest gave the pair the idea for the project.

"I've had football practices in August completely canceled because you can't go outside because of the smoke, and everybody knows, living here, that it affects people," Osborne said. "But a lot of people don't really think about how it affects plants, and so we kinda wanted to explore that side of things."

Agriculture and wildfires are both big features in the Eastern Washington region, Thogerson added, but when he and Osborne began looking into how smoke - not fire itself - impacted crop seeds, "there's pretty much no research or literature on it at all."

"The early stages are always the most important," Osborne said. "Like, you see in humans, like kids, the childhood. The seeds - it's no different. You know, that's what's setting up a good foundation for a healthy, solid plant that's going to yield and produce lots of food for people and farmers to make a profit."

The project took Osborne and Thogerson the entire school year to research and put together as a part of their biomedical innovations class, taught by Darci Hastings.

It was a natural decision to work together to tackle their question, despite Hastings' warning that such partnerships often result in strained friendships.

"I mean, me and Anders have been debating issues from, math problems to sports since, like, we were in first grade. That's nothing new," Osborne said. "You know, we do that every day, but we know it's out of fun, it's out of love. So it wasn't an issue when we got there either."

Hastings, who has taught the course nearly half of her 26-year education career, said her role is to teach kids how to research and develop a project on their own.

"I can't be an expert every year in, you know, 25 different projects," she said. "And so I view myself - and I told the kids - I am the project manager. I'm making sure you're moving along at the pace that is gonna get you to the finish line, because they do have some hard deadlines that if they miss them, they don't get to participate. We don't want anyone in that situation."

Though she had to leave the Arizona competition a day early to return to her family and work, Hastings was watching the awards ceremony on a YouTube livestream when the boys won.

"I was kind of freaking out, like screaming during my class," she said. "I had my ninth-graders, and I was, like, shaking, and I was literally running up and down the hallway and telling everyone in the hallway that they had won.

"I told the kids I was smiling so hard I had to, like, push my face down."

Multiple of Hastings' students have gone to the national competition before - including the only other Eastern Washington winner in history, Anna Armstrong, who received fourth place in environmental engineering in 2022 for her development of a biodegradable plastic made with fungi.

Armstrong, who is now a senior at Western Washington University, was the one who took the microscopic images of the seed coats for Osborne and Thogerson's project using a scanning electron microscope after she was a guest speaker in their class. She also ran seeds through a Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer, which returned data about their chemical compositions. Osborne and Thogerson found, in this data, evidence to suggest that smoked seed chemical compositions were different from that of unsmoked seeds.

But winning second in the world wasn't the only takeaway from going to the weeklong competition for the teens.

"It was so cool to be able to talk to actual experts," Osborne said. "It's kind of, like, validating to know that our hard work paid off and they liked our research."

"I don't think that there's anything more rewarding with our stuff than these people who are experts in our field being super engaged and interested," Thogerson added.

The pair will graduate from high school Sunday. Both were accepted into the University of Washington, Osborne planning to study applied mathematics, and Thogerson, bioengineering. They said they might try over the summer to prepare a paper for publication based on their research - though they aren't sure how the world of scientific publishing works yet. In college, Osborne said they are "definitely going to continue our research."

Specifically, they want to look next into items they suspect may have been disrupted in the seeds by the smoke treatments - specifically, an enzyme that repairs proteins damaged by oxidative stress, and the production pathway for a waxy substance seeds create to protect against environmental stress. If further research points to these pathways being impacted by smoke exposure, there is potential to develop a treatment for smoke-stressed seeds.

Especially with increasing wildfire prevalence and climate change, they think there is a demand for such exploration into smoke and crops before "there's no turning back."

"It would be nice if we could get in some labs or get some grants or something, like find some people who want to help us," Thogerson said.

"Because if they can help us, we can help a lot of other people."

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This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 8:06 AM.