Farmingdale Students Experience “Life in the Lab”

Two Farmingdale High School students were recently awarded the prestigious honor to participate in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's (CSHL) Partners for the Future lab research program.

Juniors Ann Lin, 17, and Katherine Vera, 17, will start the program in September 2013 during their senior years of high school.

“We are extremely proud of Ann and Katherine, and their remarkable accomplishments,” said John Lorentz, Farmingdale School District Superintendent of Schools. “These selections are a result of their dedication, effort and interest in science research and their studies.”

Nominated by their school science chairperson, Ann and Katherine were selected into the CSHL program because of their individual high scholastic achievements in science, math and engineering and participation in Mathletes, Robotics and/ or the Science Olympiad.

Ann and Katherine were two out of 12 Long Island students chosen to take part in the highly selective program. In the past 23 years, only two other Farmingdale High School students have been a part of CSHL’s Partners for the Future program.

The students will work alongside world-class biomedical researchers as a part of an interactive laboratory team for 10 hours each week from September 2013 to March 2014.

The CSHL Partners for the Future lab program began in 1990 to give Long Island students hands-on experience in real-world biomedical studies while being exposed to the day-to-day life in a working lab. More than 160 Long Island students have participated in this unique competitive program that gives kids access to the cutting-edge technologies and techniques employed by the world’s leading biologists.

“We congratulate to these two bright students and look forward to working shoulder-to-shoulder with them on biological research that is so critical to diagnosing and treating diseases like cancer and autism and addressing global challenges like hunger and alternative energy sources,” said Dr, David Jackson, CSHL Professor and head of the Partners for the Future Program.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory - founded in 1890 is a private, not-for-profit research and educational institution ranked No. 1 in the world by Thomson Reuters for the impact of its research on the fields of biology and genetics.