Intel is dropping its support of the storied annual Intel Science Talent Search that brings 40 finalists in science and math from American high schools to Washington D.C. every year to meet the country’s leaders, and which numbers Nobel prize winners among its past contestants.
Its support will end in 2017, but it will continue supporting an international science talent search at least through 2019, according to a report in the New York Times.
The company’s spokesperson for the matter, could not immediately be reached, but was quoted in the New York Times as saying the company was “proud of its legacy.”
Intel took over the contest from Westinghouse in 1998. The company’s website contains no hint that it was dropping its support of the contest, which it described as “the nation’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition.”
The contest gives awards to high school seniors for scientific research projects and their potential for leadership in the scientific community.
Around 1,800 students attending American high schools enter the competition each year.
An applicant pool is narrowed to 300 semifinalists who receive cash prices. The top 40 are invited to Washington D.C. for a week-long celebration and to compete for top honors, with a top award of $150,000. A total of $1.5 million prizes will be awarded this year.
The cost of the contest is said to be around $6 million, a small amount of money for a company that reported $13.2 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year.
A champion of the contest and a promoter of so-called “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education was Craig Barrett, who was Intel’s CEO from 1998 -the year Intel took over the contest – to 2005. Intel’s current CEO is Brian Krzanich, who has moved the company in new directions such as the Internet of Things while trying to stem a decline in sales of chips to the PC industry and maintain a lead in sales to server manufacturers
The New York Times reported that Intel informed the talent search’s directors that it will support the search until its contract ends in 2017. It will continue to support a separate international talent search at least through 2019, the Times quoted an Intel spokesman as saying.
Photo: Intel headquarters (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
