Manhasset High School science research scholars presented at the WAC Lighting Invitational Science Fair on April 27.
Students who participated in this competition were judged by professionals in their respective field of science and several were honored with awards, which included monetary prizes of up to $200.
Sophomores Arjun Wanchoo and Nicolas Keyoung took first place in the Earth and Environmental category for their project “Exposing Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) and Ryegrass (Lolium perenne) to Various Concentrations of Motor Oil to Assess their Phytoremediation Capabilities and Effects of Motor Oil on Root Architecture and Height.”
Also, in the Earth and Environmental category, sophomores Robert Lu and Yu Xiang Lin took third place for their project “Optimizing Lipid Extraction of Chlorella vulgaris Through the Evaluation of Organic Solvents, Ultrasound and Thermal Cell Lysis Techniques” and Suri Patel received Honorable Mention for her project “The Effect of a V- type ATPase Inhibitor on the Absorbance and Density of Diatoms.”
In the Chemistry category, sophomores Joshua Chung and Bentley Lam received Honorable Mention for their project “Optimization of Copper Sulfate Removal from Wastewater Using Novel Hydrogel Systems and Brassica juncea for Bioremediation.”
In the Computer Science and Machine Learning category, sophomore Roy Choi received Honorable Mention for his project “DRCAI: A Disaster Response Convolutional Artificial Intelligence,” as did freshmen Sophia Fulton and Aidan He for their project “A Novel Predictive Python Model for Forest Fire Burn Area Using Regression in Random Forest.”
In the Engineering category, three teams of sophomores were recognized with Honorable Mention awards, including Chiara D’Angelo and Paige Petropoulos for their project “Utilizing Different Types of Organic Dye to Enhance the Performance of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells,” Li Zhang and William Pereira for their project “A Novel Investigation on the Filtration of Pollutants Through Bio-permeable Pavement” and Belen Vazquez and Krisha Wadhwa for their project “Algae-Powered MFCs: Optimizing Ammonium Sulfate for
Energy Output.”
In the category of General Biology, sophomores Lucas Pai and Logan Nesterczuk received Honorable mention for their project “Inducing Artificial Food Dyes in Assessing the Health Effects of Daphnia magna.”
Finally, in the category of Medicine and Health, two teams took home Honorable Mention honors, including juniors Alice Song and Elim Yang for their project “Evaluating, Allium sativum, Euphorbia peplus, and Taxus baccata for Targeted Remediation of Cancer-
Related Mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans” and sophomores Jessica Abraham and Miley Liu for their project “The Effect of Different Pesticides and Herbicides on the Expression of the SNAI2 Gene in Planorbarius cornelius.”
