Senior Michael Winer of Montgomery Blair High School received one of the three first place awards in the Intel Science Talent Search Tuesday, taking home a $150,000 prize.

Winer won the first place medal of distinction for innovation, which recognizes students who exemplify the problem-solving aptitude of an engineer through innovative design and creativity, according to the Intel website.

Winer’s studied how electrons interact with phonons, the particles of sound. His work could potentially be applied to more complex atomic structures, according to the Society for Science and the Public.

This year, there were 1,800 entries in the competition. Winer and Richard Montgomery senior Yizhen Zhang were selected as two of the 40 finalists and were the only two students chosen from Maryland.

Winer has been interested in science as long as he can remember. Later in his life he became fascinated with physics.

“I became interested in physics when I learned that it utilized mathematical reasoning, while still allowing for approximations and non-rigorous thinking,” Winer said.

Last year, Winer was also a silver medalist at the 2014 International Physics Olympiad and the top-scoring U.S. student on the theoretical exam.

Winer said that the people he met in these competitions further developed his interest in science and played a role in his motivation to continue studying physics in the future.

“[Winning was] the best feeling I can think of,” he said.