Manhasset High School seniors Kimberly Te and Christine Yoo were the winning team in the Region Four Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology and have been named finalists. The students’ project was a study on engineering a novel approach to harvesting energy and cleaning up oil-spill regions. Thus far, the girls have shared a team scholarship of $6,000.
Their project is entitled, “Natural, Cost-Effective Anodes for Optimized Sediment Microbial Fuel Cells: Engineering a Novel Approach to Harvesting Energy and Cleaning Up Oil-Polluted Regions.” The team engineered a device made of natural, sustainable materials that cleans up oil-polluted areas and uses the otherwise unusable oil to generate clean energy to be used to power remote sensors. Te and Yoo had previously studied the biological effects of pollution on organisms and wanted to focus their research on cleaning up pollutants, specifically oil. They devised an efficient and cost-effective device that could degrade hydrocarbons, while also producing electricity.
The students presented their research in November to a panel of judges at Carnegie Mellon University, host of the Region Four Finals. Te and Yoo are now moving to the final round to present their work at the National Finals in Washington, DC, from Dec. 4 to Dec. 8, where $500,000 in scholarships will be awarded, including two top prizes of $100,000.
Two additional team regional finalists came from Manhasset: Jun Yan He of Manhasset High School with Bongseok Jung of Herricks High School; and Kevin Sadhu of Manhasset High School with Arvind Sridhar of Bellarmine College Prep School, San Jose, CA.
Nearly 4,000 students registered for this year’s competition and a total of 1,781 projects were submitted for consideration. 466 students were named semifinalists and 97 were named regional finalists. The students presented their research in a closed, online forum and entries were judged at the regional level by esteemed scientists at six leading research universities that hosted the regional competitions. The competition is the nation’s premiere science research competition for high school students and seeks to promote excellence by encouraging students to undertake individual or team research projects. Winners will be announced on Dec. 8.
