FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 28, 2014
MEDIA CONTACTS: Ryan Mulholland, Sam Marksheid and Rebecca Cheng | (516) 869-7794

North Hempstead, NY – The Town of North Hempstead continued its tradition of honoring semifinalists from the Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) during a ceremony before the regular Town Board meeting at Town Hall on February 25th. The Intel STS is the nation’s most prestigious science research competition for high school seniors and requires students to present original research to nationally recognized scientists.

Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth and the Town Board honored 18 semifinalists who all attend schools in the Town of North Hempstead. Honorees came from Manhasset High School, Paul D. Schreiber High School in Port Washington, Friends Academy, John L. Miller Great Neck North High School, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, Herricks High School, Roslyn High School and Wheatley High School.

Dozens of proud family members and faculty looked on as Supervisor Bosworth presented certificates of recognition to the extraordinary young students who also had the opportunity to explain briefly their innovative projects.

“I consider this the best part of my job when we get to honor outstanding students such as those present here tonight,” said Supervisor Bosworth. “I also want to congratulate and commend the teachers, administrators and parents, without whom these achievements wouldn’t be possible.”

The 18 semifinalists from North Hempstead represented an impressive 6% of the 300 semifinalists nationwide, who were chosen from a field of 1,800 entrants. Their projects ranged from taking a new approach to Alzheimer’s disease therapy to finding the most environmentally friendly method of eliminating spilled oil from the oceans.

Below is a list of this year’s semifinalists with their project titles:

Manhasset High School

• Priya Alagesan: Defining Region-Specific Interactions of Members of the Leading Edge Protein Complex in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
• Albert Kim: Environmental Toxins, Oxidative Stress, and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in HTB-11 Cells: New Approach to Alzheimer's Disease Therapy
• Michael Kusnierek: The Effect of Prolonged Sonication Periods on the Biofilm Formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa on CNT Polymer Matrices
• Kevin Z. Tong: Milk Fat Globule-EGF Factor 8 Alleviates Cell Death in Irradiated Intestinal Epithelial Cells

Paul D. Schreiber High School 

• Dillon Cassidy Drukker: The Correlation Between Energy Drink Consumption and Substance Use and the Demography of Consumers
• Harry Theodore Paul: Growing Spine Implant and Test Method
• Simon Shapiro: Preferential Genetic Expression in Regions Susceptible to Vulnerability in Alzheimer’s Disease

Friends Academy Upper School

• Erik Jens Loscalzo: The Most Environmentally Effective Method of Eliminating Spilled Oil from the Oceans

Great Neck North High School

• Richard Feder: Analysis of Chandra X-ray Data of Elliptical Galaxies in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS)
• Larry Li: Velocity Gradients in Relation to Spatial Scale of Star-Forming Dense Cores in the Perseus Molecular Cloud
• Terry Wei: Comparing the Back-projection Method of Analysis with the JMA HiNet Catalogue Using the 2011 March 11 Event to Determine the Effectiveness of Imaging Aftershocks

William A. Shine Great Neck South High School

• Evangeline A. Giannopoulos: The Identification of Novel Runt and Even-Skipped Transcriptional Co-factors in Drosophila
• Kara Kupferberg: A Study of Non-verbal Emotion Perception and Autism: Influence of Gender and Emotion

Herricks High School

• William Chung: The Use of Glassy Matrices to Isolate and Identify the Nitric Oxide Dioxygenase Intermediate.
• Sachit Singal: Chemical and Computational Biology Approach to Identifying the Binding Site of Novel Anti-Tubercular Agents Targeting Mtb-FtsZ
• Ankoor Talwar: An in vitro Assessment of Nitric Oxide-Releasing Nanoparticles as a Potential Drug Delivery Vehicle for Treating Hypoxia-Induced Pulmonary Vascular Inflammation
• Jerry Li: Strike a Pose: Power Posing and Academic Performance

The Wheatley School

• Lauren Michelle Perry: Realistic Tissue-Simulating Solid Hemoglobin-Containing PVA Phantoms for Optical Spectroscopy 

From left, Lauren Michelle Perry, Councilman Peter J. Zuckerman, William Chung, Supervisor Judi Bosworth, Erik Jens Loscalzo, Dillon Cassidy Drukker, Priya Alagesan, Councilwoman Lee Seeman, Albert Kim, Harry Theodore Paul, Jerry Li, Evangeline A. Giannopoulous, Larry Li, Kara Kupferberg, Michael Kusnierek, Ankoor Talwar, Terry Wei, Kevin Z. Tong, Richard Feder, Councilwoman Dina De Giorgio, Councilman Angelo Ferrara, Councilwoman Anna Kaplan and Town Clerk Wayne Wink.