Harvest Prep students represent Yuma at international science fair
Harvest Prep sent four students to Phoenix’s 1,700-student ISEF, where Yuma research on plants, materials and animal science went global.
Four Harvest Preparatory Academy students carried Yuma science to the Phoenix Convention Center, joining more than 1,700 young scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. The six-day competition, held May 9 through May 15, drew finalists from 365 affiliate fairs in more than 60 countries, regions and territories and offered more than $7 million in awards and prizes.
For Yuma, the trip was more than a trophy run. Harvest Prep’s ISEF qualifiers included Jorge Covarrubias, Yessica Perez, Alba Sampson and Estefany Regalado, a group that grew after Regalado earned her way in through the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair. Arizona’s state fair brings together first-place winners from school, homeschool, district, county and regional competitions, with senior grand award winners advancing to ISEF, making the Harvest Prep delegation a product of a full competitive pipeline rather than a single classroom showcase.
The students’ work covered plant, materials and animal sciences, a spread that shows how the school’s science culture has widened beyond one specialty. Covarrubias had already taken first place in plant science at the Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair and won best of show at the Yuma County Science and Engineering Expo, where his project stood out in a field of 311 individual or partner projects and 25 large group projects involving more than 450 students from 19 schools.
Harvest Prep science teacher Alfred Santos said he was proud of the whole class because every student created a different science project. That breadth matters in a county where scientific talent often has to move through school fairs, district contests, regional competitions and state qualifiers before reaching a global stage.
The projects also pointed to practical problems tied to life in Yuma County and the broader Southwest. Harvest Prep students have presented work involving a reusable menstrual pad designed to monitor feminine health, a delivery-truck system using acoustic wave technology to inhibit E. coli growth in romaine lettuce, and a solar-powered desalination prototype with a graphene-based membrane. Regalado’s work focused on antibiotic need in countries with widespread poverty, while the school’s earlier ISEF cohort included materials-science research that earned national attention.
That earlier success gives the Phoenix trip added weight. In 2025, Carmen Martinez and Mercedes Castro won a third-place grand award in materials science, the first Grand Award Harvest Preparatory Academy had ever brought back from ISEF, and Regalado received an Arizona State University special award scholarship worth up to $38,000. Harvest Prep’s Yuma campus opened in August 2001, and its repeated appearances at ISEF suggest the school is building something more durable than a one-time breakthrough: a local science pipeline that can keep sending Yuma students onto the international stage.
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