Students at The Islamic Academy for Peace (TIA) in Methuen earned accolades in a variety of educational challenges this year.

Here is a rundown of the winners:

At the Massachusetts Middle School Science & Engineering Fair, these students were recognized in their areas of competition:

*Aisha Zaheer: first place, and was recognized with the Broadcom Coding for Commitment® Award.

*Safa Ubaidu and Esma Boztas: second place

*Yahya Junaid Siddiq: second place

*Leena Aboumahmoud, third place

*Sena Kaplan, Honorable Mention and received the prestigious Trailblazer Award for Innovation in Life Sciences.

Additional accolades: Aisha Zaheer, Safa Ubaidu, Esma Boztas, Yahya Junaid Siddiq and Nadeem Douffir have all been nominated as the top 10% finalists for the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.

At the Region IV Middle School Science and Engineering Fair:

One of the Top 3 awards, the Lemelson Innovator Award, was secured by second-place finishers Safa Ubaidu and Esma Boztas of Grade 6.

In addition, four TIA projects secured awards in different streams at the regional level:

Electrical and Mechanical Engineering: Aisha Zaheer, second place.

Chemistry: AbdulMuhaymin Rahman, third place.

Behavioral Sciences: Safa Ubaidu and Esma Boztas, second place; Nadeem Douffir, third place.

Environmental Sciences: Leena Aboumahmoud, third place.

On to the First Lego League, where TIA students qualified for the State Championship! The FLL championship has 3 parts: a robot game challenge, a science project and abiding by the Core values. The two TIA FLL teams (TIA Cyber Cyclones and Lego Stormers) won awards and qualified for the Massachusetts State Championship.

These 3 awards to TIA:

• Outstanding Coach/Mentor – Br. Alaa Abou Mahmoud. Statement from the judges: “This mentor truly embodies the spirit of FIRST and his career in FLL is to bring out the storm.”

• Core Values Award – Cyber Cyclones. Statement from the judges: “Core Values Winner goes to a team that embraced each of the six core values like a storm. The impact of their project by helping people in their community with autism and the robot design by sharing their code through open-source access.” Cyber Cyclones team members include Ahmed Jassem, Jena Salah, Rihan Shaikh, Leena Abou Mahmoud, Sana Kaplan, Leyla Ozden, Ayishah Rahman, Aisha Zaheer, Mae Mahmood and Abdulmuhaymin Rahman.

• Innovation Project Award Finalist – Lego Stormers. Statement from the judges: “This team’s project took us by a storm. We were wowed by what we have seen after the team showed us how to code with no screen. The team that thought that programming is play – your skit, cards and marvel made our day.” Lego Stormers team members: Esma Boztas, Yahya Junaid Siddiq, Safa Ubaidu, Marwa Abdeloifi, Muna Arat, Esa Khan, Ayan Nafee, Sham Alsaeid and Adam Anbar.