Math Whiz Draws Poster for Science Fair

Talented at math, 17-year-old Todd River had planned to go into computer-aided design until last year, when he took his first art class and discovered how much he liked freehand drawing.

Then, the Channel Islands High School senior won a poster contest for this year’s Ventura County Science Fair, beating out students from around the county.

Winning the contest was exciting, Todd said, but he doesn’t need special honors to get satisfaction from his art.

“When I’m done with a piece and I like it a lot and other people like it, I’m just real happy with myself,” he said. “I just see something I want to draw and I try to make it as realistic as I can. I’m a perfectionist.”

Prints of Todd’s winning entry will be used around the county to advertise the fair, which will be held April 19 to 21 at the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

Sponsored by the nonprofit Ventura County Economic Development Assn. and the Ventura County superintendent of schools office, the annual event is open to students in the sixth through 12th grades from both public and private schools.

In addition to awarding first place to Todd’s poster, organizers gave second place to Brian Kay, a seventh-grade student at Colina Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks. Third place went to Emma Nieva, who is in the 11th grade with Todd at Channel Islands High.

Todd said the hardest part of designing his poster was choosing what to draw. Knowing that the purpose of the poster is to encourage students to enter the fair, Todd decided to use objects to represent various fields of science, such as a leaf to signify botany and a picture of the Earth for environmental science. For zoology, he drew a monkey and a lizard.

But when it came to physics, Todd chose a person: Albert Einstein.

“When I think of physics,” Todd said, “I think of him.”