Kodiak High School Team Wins Europa Challenge Second Year in a Row

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

A group of science-smart high schoolers have returned victorious from a world-wide competition yet again. Last year, Kodiak High School’s World Bridge Team won the NASA World Wind Europa Challenge, an international competition designed for university teams and research groups. They took home the gold in the same competition this year.

According to a press release from the Kodiak Island Borough School District, the Europa Challenge asks participants to come up with solutions to world-wide issues, and the 2016 theme was “Smart Cities and Territories.” It asked competitors to figure out how to make cities “work together” in a more “sustainable, more liveable, and more resilient” way.

The Kodiak group submitted a further developed version of last year’s project, which NASA re-named “Earthquake Signal Precursors.” The project’s original name is “the Global Earthquake Forecast System” and it uses sensors to detect pre-earthquake signals. In the press release, World Bridge developer Ron Fortunato says the team advanced the quality of its systems and now has a complete sensor network.

The win this year and in 2015 has earned the project attention from both national and international organizations.