Several students advance in national competition

Written by Matt Spillane
Monday, 06 February 2012 17:14

Several John Jay High School students advanced to the next round of a national science competition after performing well at a regional event at the high school last weekend.

The Westchester-Rockland Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) was held at John Jay High School on Saturday, Feb. 4. According to its website, JSHS "promotes original research and experimentation in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics at the high school level and publicly recognizes students for outstanding achievement."

Seniors Stephanie Riocci, Mina Shah, Logan Carbaugh and Michael Yablon advanced and will compete at the Upstate New York JSHS at the University at Albany from March 19-20.

Those four seniors, along with junior Eli Lee, were among hundreds of students from 30 high schools who participated in the event, which is part of the national JSHS competition. Winners of the regional rounds advance to the final event in May, when students compete for awards, scholarships and spots in the London International Youth Science Forum in July and August.

John Jay High School science teacher Ann Marie Lipinsky helps organize the Westchester-Rockland JSHS with a committee of teachers from around Westchester, and she said that the event is divided into two competitions: one for students who are selected to orally present their projects, and one for students to present their projects with posters.

The JSHS at John Jay had 13 speaker rooms, she said, each with 10 or 11 speakers. The top two speakers in each room advanced to the Upstate New York round, and the third and fourth-place finishers in each room will be poster presenters in Albany.

Stephanie placed second in Medicine and Health I and will continue as a speaker in Albany. Her project was titled "The Optimization of a Reverse Transfection Protocol, and Subsequent Development of a Novel Response Element Reporter Array."

It "involved building a tool that can be used to screen for proteins involved in angiognesis that could be targets for anti-cancer drugs and her reporter array is currently being used in the lab where she worked," Ms. Lipinsky said.

Mina placed third in Medicine and Health IV, Logan third in Medicine and Health II and Michael fourth in Genetics. Those three students will be poster presenters in Albany.

Eli competed in the poster competition at John Jay and won third place in the Biology category. Poster presenters at the Westchester-Rockland level do not move on to Albany.

The event at John Jay had judges from the colleges and industries in the area, Ms. Lipinsky said.