A student from West Des Moines Valley High School won $11,000 at the first annual Iowa State Science and Technology Fair (ISSTF).

Stephanie Staub, a senior at Valley and Central Academy, won a $10,000 tuition grant when her project, titled “Is it probable to create a truly random number generator? Phase III,” won first place.

It was the first year for the annual Iowa State Science and Technology Fair, which was held at Iowa State March 21-22.

Staub will now compete at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Louisville, Ky., May 9 -16.

Staub began working on her project five years ago.

She first designed and built a central logic circuit from scratch, after she found out how computer hardware functioned.

She then modified the component so it could randomly select two numbers from one to six.

Ed Pilkington, Staub’s sponsor and a consultant at Central Academy, has been working with Staub on her project for three years.

Pilkington said Staub researched if it was possible for a computer program to be truly random. Her first hypothesis was that a computer program could not be truly random, he said.

But she found her computer project had to be truly random because no one could push the button the same every time, Pilkington said.

In addition to the four-year tuition grant sponsored by the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, Staub also won $1,000 for first place in the high school physical science division.

Because of its great success, there will be another annual Iowa State Science and Technology Fair next year.

“It’s a great opportunity for kids to find out what research is all about,” Pilkington said.