50 Long Island Students Named Regeneron Scholars

LONG ISLAND, NY — The top 300 scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2024, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors, were announced Wednesday by the Society for Science — and 50 of them are from Long Island.

The 300 scholars will be awarded $2,000 each and their schools will be awarded $2,000 for each enrolled scholar.

“Congratulations to the Regeneron Science Talent Search 2024 scholars, whose exceptional projects demonstrate their ability to use science to improve the world,” said Christina Chan, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs at Regeneron, the global biotech giant based in the Hudson Valley. “In partnership with the Society, we are proud to provide this prestigious national platform that recognizes, celebrates, and rewards students for their curiosity and innovation and encourages them to push the boundaries of science to tackle society’s most pressing issues.”

The Regeneron Science Talent Search scholars were selected from 2,162 entrants from 712 high schools across 46 states, Puerto Rico and 10 other countries – the highest number of entrants since 1969 and an increase of over 200 from 2023.

On Jan. 24, 40 of them will be named Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists. The finalists will then compete for more than $1.8 million in awards during a week-long competition in Washington, D.C. March 6-13.

Scholars were chosen based on their outstanding research, leadership skills, community involvement, commitment to academics, creativity in asking scientific questions and demonstration of exceptional promise as leaders in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) through original, independent research projects, essays, and recommendations.

The 300 scholars hail from 196 American and international high schools in 36 states and China. Locally, they include:

Rebecca Bover, 17, Herricks High School, New Hyde Park, NY. Project Title: The Novel Effect of Rosuvastatin on Cholesterol 25-Hydroxylase (Ch25h) Oxysterol Metabolism and IL-6 in Response to LPS and ssRNA40 Stimulation

Aidan Cazalet, 17, Saint Anthony’s High School, South Huntington, NY. Project Title: Examination of the Effects by a Salinity and Temperature Gradient on Microcystis aeruginosa Morphology: A Keyence Fluorescence Microscope Analysis

Alex Chen, 17, Syosset High School, NY. Project Title: Evaluating the Neuroprotective Effects of Spearmint Oil in the Caenorhabditis elegans Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Hiuyi Cheng, 17, Herricks High School, NY. Project Title: Evaluating Border Associated Macrophages: A Novel Approach to Investigating Cerebral Blood Flow Dysregulation in ApoE4 Mice

Jessica Mary Curran, 18, Westhampton Beach High School, NY. Project Title: Analyzing the Effectiveness of Dasysiphonia japonica as a Seaweed Liquid Fertilizer Through Abelmoschus esculentus Growth and Pigment Concentration

Christiana Foufas, 18, Wellington C. Mepham High School, Bellmore, NY. Project Title: Adapting to Pressure: The Bone Structure-Function Relationship in the Rabbit Talus

Benjamin Gordon, 18, Paul D. Schreiber High School, Port Washington, NY. Project Title: Impact of Cannabinoids on Prostaglandin Synthesis in Activated Inflammatory Cells

Jacob Tyler Gross, 17, Roslyn High School, NY. Project Title: Investigating Synergistic Interactions Among SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies

Griffin Hon, 17, Syosset High School, NY. Project Title: Evaluating Differential Nutritional Regulation of Stem Cell Plasticity

Samuel Hsu, 17, George W. Hewlett High School, Hewlett Bay Park, NY. Project Title: A Matrix Metalloproteinase (MMP) Regulated by Salicylic Acid (SA) and Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) Plays an Integral Role in Prothallial Development of Gametophytes of Ceratopteris richardii

Luke Huang, 17, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: Multiscale Analysis of the Hubble Tension in an Evaluation of the ΛCDM Model

Vincent Weisi Huang, 17, Syosset High School, NY. Project Title: A Smart Computer Program LauePt4 for Recognizing and Simulating Laue Patterns and Its Applications

Bradley Kelton, 18, Ward Melville High School, East Setauket, NY. Project Title: Geochronologic and Dynamic Constraints on the Topographic Evolution and Critical Mineral Deposits of the Southwestern United States

Syon Khatter, 18, Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, Bellmore NY. Project Title: Investigating Impacts of Sucralose on Hedonic Feeding Behaviors in C. elegans as a Model for Prevention and Treatment of Obesity and Eating Disorders

Brandon Kim, 17, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: Deciphering Receptor-Ligand Connectomes in Models of Lung Adenocarcinoma

Natasha Kulviwat, Age: 17, Jericho Senior High School, NY. Project Title: The Neurobiology of Suicide: Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown as a Novel Suicide-Risk Biomarker

Katherine Liang, Age: 17, Ward Melville High School, NY. Project Title: Differentially Private Deep Learning in Biomedical Research

Brian Zhou Liu, Age: 17, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: Evaluating the Applied Effectiveness of ECG Compression Algorithms for Myocardial Infarction Detection

Katherine Lynch, Age: 18, Sacred Heart Academy, Hempstead, NY. Project Title: Mindset Over Matter: Can Self-Reported Implicit Theories of Intelligence Regulate the Desire for Academic Rigor, Academic Achievement and Motivation?

Sadie Rain Muller, Age: 17, Paul D. Schreiber High School, NY. Project Title: Inside the Echo Chamber: A Closer Look at Climate Change Discourse on Twitter (X) and Political Correlates of Affective Polarization

Christina Pan, Age: 17, Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, NY. Project Title: A Novel Application of the Fenton Reaction in the Chemical Upcycling of Polystyrene

Tej Parekh, Age: 17, Paul D. Schreiber High School, NY. Project Title: Utilizing Artificial Intelligence for Categorizing Wildfire Origins Through Satellite Image Analysis

Daniela Parmigiani, Age: 17, Saint Anthony’s High School, NY. Project Title: The Optimization of the MS2/MCP-GFP Live Transcriptional Imaging Platform in Caenorhabditis elegans

Heemali Kalpeshkumar Patel, Age: 17, Herricks High School, NY. Project Title: Visualizing Correlational Trends Between Average Monthly Temperature and Total Monthly Precipitation With Amphibian Populations in Canadian National Parks: A Linear Regression Approach

Aayush Prakash, Age: 18, Half Hollow Hills High School, NY. Project Title: Understanding the Cis-Regulatory Code of Mammary Epithelial Cells

Ankur Raghavan, Age: 17, Bethpage High School, NY. Project Title: The Reduction of Agricultural Water Consumption Through the Utilization of Wireless Sensor Arrays

Hannah Isabelle Rosenberg, Age: 17, Paul D. Schreiber High School, NY. Project Title: Christian Nationalism, Antisemitism and Attitudes Toward the War in Ukraine

Harrison Roth, Age: 17, Paul D. Schreiber High School, NY. Project Title: Quantitative Implications of Nesting in State Legislatures

Luigi J. Sartori, Age: 17, Mineola High School, NY. Project Title: A Proposed Method for Measurement of Oil Spill Bioremediation Enhancement

Claire Schwartz, Age: 17, John F. Kennedy High School, NY. Project Title: The Administration of Sulforaphane via Broccoli Sprouts Ameliorates Parkinson’s Disease Phenotypes in a Drosophila melanogaster Model

Aryan Nirav Shah, Age: 17, Syosset High School, NY. Project Title: Analyzing the Effects of Different Types of Gerrymandering on Congressional Representation Across the 2010 Redistricting Cycle

Kishan Shanmugananthan, Age: 17, Herricks High School, NY. Project Title: Investigating the MSI2 Germline Variance Effects on Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential (CHIP)

Cayden Shen, Age: 17, Roslyn High School, NY. Project Title: Using an Inexpensive Night Vision Camera as a Novel Detector in NIR Spectroscopy

Dylan Jinhong Shen, Age: 17, Smithtown High School, NY. Project Title: A Novel Algorithm for Measuring Forest Incursions Using Pixelated Remote Sensing Data

Kemmora Simmons, Age: 17, Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High School, NY. Project Title: The Effect of the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemical Soy on the Psychological Stress Levels of Neonatal Drosophila melanogaster

Samantha Ashley Stewart, Age: 17, Mineola High School, NY. Project Title: The Use of Perfluorooctyl Bromide as an Oxygen Diffsuer To Treat Chronic Lung Diseases

Victoria Tan, Age: 17, Jericho Senior High School, NY. Project Title: Frontiers in Exoplanetary Science: Novel Approaches to Temperature Prediction and Habitability Assessment

Helen Tang, Age: 18, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NYProject Title: Impact of Unmet Social Needs on Acute and Long-Term Outcomes in COVID-19 Patients

Claire Tao, Age: 17, North Shore High School, NY. Project Title: TIGIT is Highly Expressed Across Various Types of Immunosuppressive Myeloid Cells Induced by Glioblastoma Extracellular Vesicles

Jack Voelker, Age: 17, Manhasset High School, NY. Project Title: The Effect of Anthropogenic Sound on the Reproductive Success of Tigriopus californicus

Grant Wang, Age: 17, Williamsville East High School, NY. Project Title: MLOffense: Multilingual Offensive Language Detection and Target Identification on Social Media Using Graph Attention Transformer

Cole Wasserman, Age: 18, John F. Kennedy High School, NY. Project Title: APC-Mediated Expansion of hPSC-Derived Natural Killer Cells

Richard Austin Wong, Age: 18, Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School, NY. Project Title: Temporal Phage Therapy: A Strategy for Managing MRSA Resistance Utilizing Bacteriophage Sb-1

Maggie Wu, Age: 18, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: Effects of Dissolved Oxygen Levels on the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Denitrification Performance of Woodchip Bioreactors Treating Onsite Wastewater

Alexander Yaokun Xu, Age: 18, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: CARe-BERT: BERT-Powered Graph Augmentation for Context-Aware Radiology Report Retrieval

Matt Yang, Age: 17, Wellington C. Mepham High School, NY. Project Title: MultiFormer: Single-Cell ATAC to RNA Prediction Framework

Michelle Yu, Age: 17, North Shore High School, NY. Project Title: Salvia hispanica L. Ameliorates the Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease in Drosophila melanogaster

Jonathan Zhang, Age: 18, Commack High School, NY. Project Title: Efficient Differentiation of Sleep-Related Hypermotor Epilepsy and REM-Sleep Behavior Disorder via Neural Aperiodic Components

Tiffany Zhang, Age: 17, William A. Shine Great Neck South High School, NY. Project Title: Resolving the Constraints Imposed by Chiral Effective Field Theory and Perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics on the Neutron Star Equation of State

Shayla Zheng, Age: 17, Roslyn High School, NY. Project Title: Cell Fusion as a Novel Mechanism Behind JQ1 Resistance in Triple Negative Breast Cancer

“Congratulations to the top 300 scholars in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search,” said Maya Ajmera, President and CEO, Society for Science and Executive Publisher, Science News. “We received a record-breaking number of applications this year; interest in this prestigious competition is at an all-time high. I am truly impressed by the quality of the projects and the ingenuity that each student brings to the competition. Their diligence, passion, and perseverance should be celebrated.”

The full list of scholars can be viewed here.