A spotlight on South Side talent

“I didn’t get much sleep last night because I was as nervous as the kids,” Herb Weiss, South Side High School’s science research facilitator, said about waiting for the results of the Siemens Math, Science & Technology competition, announced on Oct. 21. “I was thinking about who would win and who wouldn’t. It’s like being a parent to all the kids.”

Weiss had plenty to think about: a record 21 of the 70 South Side students in the school’s research program submitted 16 project papers to the competition. Weiss was well aware of the number of entrants, because at least one paper wasn’t ready until 7 a.m. on the day the projects were due. Racing to submit them to the College Board in Princeton, N.J., which administers the competition, Weiss left his office on the second floor of the high school at 9:30 on the morning of Oct. 3 and drove to Princeton. He arrived at 1 p.m. — four hours before the entry deadline.

The competition recognizes the best young scientific minds in the country, and more than 1,500 projects were submitted this year by nearly 2,500 students — an unprecedented number. The projects spanned a wide range of topics in math, science and cutting-edge technology.

South Side’s Austin Wild was selected as a regional finalist, and Nick Suss was named a semifinalist. Both worked with partners over the summer under the direction of Stony Brook University Materials Science Engineering Professor Dr. Miriam Rafailovich, on projects involving regenerative medicine, specifically dental bone regrowth.

Wild’s project, for which he won a $1,000 scholarship, involved the study of an extracellular matrix in dental pulp stem cells to make bone grafts using static-magnetic fields. The South Side senior, whose mother is a dentist, said he reads about developments in stem cell research and tries to stay current in a field he finds intriguing.

As a regional finalist, Wild will present his research at Carnegie Mellon University on Nov. 18 and 19. Winners of the regional events, held at six leading research universities across the country, will go on to the national finals at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Dec. 3-5, where they will compete for a college scholarship of up to $100,000.