2024 High School Winners

Harper Hipps is in the 12th grade at Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, Arizona. She was excited to participate in the contest and became more inclined to submit a video once she started researching the impacts of urban heat islands on health. Harper was pleasantly surprised to find out how many rules and regulations are already in place to combat urban heat and the number of people that are passionate about finding solutions to this issue.

Harper has used iMovie for fun in the past but had never created a video like this before she participated in the contest. To start, Harper conducted broad research of the topic, then narrowed down the key themes by thinking about what information stood out and would be the most impactful to include. She said that the challenging part of making this video was finding stock images and videos that fit with the vision she had. Her advice to future contest participants is to “pick a topic that interests you because you will spend a lot of time learning about it,” throughout the process.

Harper was the president of her school’s Computer Science Society and the vice president of the MU Alpha Theta Math Honor Society. She is also a competitive dancer and runs a science club for neurodivergent adults outside of school. Harper has earned an honorable mention for the High School NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards and was a winner in the Junior Achievement of Arizona’s 18 Under 18 in 2023. She mentioned that her mom is her role model because she is “organized, on top of everything, and great all around.” Harper is also inspired by her biology teacher Mrs. Weiland because she “is so smart and good at what she does that I learned so much, not just about biology but also how I can succeed in other classes and beyond.” Next year, Harper will begin studying bioinformatics at the University of San Diego, where she plans on using her prize money for textbooks.