65th Annual STS (2005-2006)
Finalists
Myers Abraham Davis

MARYLAND
Myers Abraham Davis, 17, of Baltimore, entered the Intel Science Talent Search with a computer sciences project that addressed collision detection for physical simulation applications in high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). Today's GPUs, commonly called graphics cards, use multiple processors, resulting in significantly faster calculations than a traditional CPU with only one microprocessor. According to Abe, "the CPU has become the bottleneck in the graphics pipeline." His project introduced a novel data structure that addresses problems of collision detection in a format that current GPUs are optimized to handle. To buy a computer for his research, Abe authored a winning grant proposal. At Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Abe is captain of the varsity wrestling team and enjoys Japanese classes. Two years ago, for a class assignment on the history of science, Abe decided to make a movie. He filmed and directed his classmates' skits, and he recorded the guitar soundtrack using his bathtub as a recording studio, noting that it had "surprisingly good acoustics." The son of Michael Davis and Julia Pachal Davis, Abe hopes to attend Carnegie Mellon or Stanford.