The Intel® International Science and Engineering Fair®  Exit (Intel ISEF) , is the world's largest international pre-college science competition. It is the premier global science competition for students in grades 9–12. Each year more than 1,700 high school students from over 70 countries, regions, and territories display their independent research and compete for more than $5 million in awards.  The 2016 Intel ISEF was in Phoenix, AZ May 8th – 13th.

Since 2009, EPA has exhibited and shared information about environmental protection with the ISEF participants and visitors. EPA encourages the young innovators to apply science to environmental challenges and recognizes one student whose work demonstrates a commitment to environmental sustainability and stewardship with the EPA Patrick H. Hurd Sustainability Award. 

In 2011, the Sustainability Award was renamed in honor of Patrick Hurd, who managed the effort behind the first EPA Sustainability Award. Read his Science Wednesday blog post Science is Cool and Verle Hansen's blog post Among the Stars to get an idea of what ISEF is like.

Alexis D’Alessandro is the winner of the 2016 P. Hurd Sustainability Award for her project that is currently providing clean drinking water affordably to a community in Africa. Alexis, a senior at Half Hollow Hills High School West in Dix Hills, New York was honored with the award for providing a cost-effective alternative to reverse osmosis water purification for a community in the Turkana Basin of Kenya. Her environmental engineering project, “Design and Implementation of a Sustainable Permeate Gap Membrane Distillation System for Water Purification in the Turkana Basin of Kenya” was inspired by a 9th grade classroom lesson on global water scarcity. 

EPA's award provides funding for the winning student and a chaperone to participate in and display the student's project at EPA's P3: People, Prosperity, and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability in 2017. P3 is an annual event that brings together young environmental innovators and scientists to showcase their designs for a sustainable future.

All Patrick H. Hurd Sustainability Award Winners

2016 Alexis D’Alessandro  New York High School Student Receives Prestigious Award for Developing Clean Drinking Water Project		2015 Joshua Zhou Chapel Hill High School Student Receives Prestigious Award for Developing a Low-Cost Method to Reduce Water Pollution
2014 Miriam Demasi Safe and Sound Housing: Lime/Fly Ash Papercrete as a Substitute for Adobe in Seismically-Active Regions in Developing Nations		2013 Jacquel Rivers and Arne Nipales Total Solar Strategy for the Tohono O'Odham Nation
2012 Thabit Pulak Home-Based Arsenic Bio-Sand Water Filter		2011 Param Jaggi The Algae-Mobile 3: Bioactive Energy and Carbon Dioxide Filtration in the Exhaust of a Car
2010 John Charles Boykin Can Recycled Plastics be Used to Reduce Landfill Waste, Help Improve the Infrastructure of Buildings, Roads, Highways and Bridges and Reduce Greenhouse Gas? Exit		2009 Ryan Cherian Alexander Energy COOL: An Echo of Humming Wind? Exit