‘It was actually kind of crazy’

‘It was actually kind of crazy’

The wait seemed endless with prize recipients named in reverse alphabetical order. Then third place in the biomedical engineering category of the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair was announced, then second place and, finally, they heard their names.

We want to be able to use what we created to speed up the healing process.”

Rachel Sacks, HAFTR senior

The wait seemed endless with prize recipients named in reverse alphabetical order. Then third place in the biomedical engineering category of the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair was announced, then second place and, finally, they heard their names.

“It was actually kind of crazy,” Gila Schein said. “When they called our names, I remember I started shaking,” added Rachel Sacks.

The two startled Woodmere residents, both 17 and seniors at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway High School, collected themselves, accepted their first-place award and posed for a photo.

Winners of the two-round fair held on Feb. 8 and March 23 will now compete against 1,700 other finalists in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles from May 14 - 19.

Their research project is titled “The Influence of Metalized Graphene Oxide/Reduced Graphene Oxide and Sulfonated Polystyrene on Dental Pulp Stem Cell Differentiation and Protein Adsorption.” Schein and Sacks said they used a process called tissue engineering to restore tissue using stem cells. The two were also semifinalists in the elite Siemens Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Competition for 2016 in the same project.

“We want to be able to use what we created to speed up the healing process,” Sacks said, pointing to a bone fracture as an example.

Lawrence High School chemistry teacher and science project mentor Rebecca Isseroff asked Schein and Sacks to write a research paper last spring on a topic that interested them. They both chose to write about graphene, a single-layer carbon atom.

The pair conducted their research at the Garcia Summer Scholars program at Stony Brook University in July, under the guidance of Dr. Miriam Rafailovich, a professor in the department of materials science at Stony Brook. “They are such good friends and work so well together,” Isseroff said. Their other mentors were Dr. Marcia Simon and Vincent Ricotta.

Sacks and Schein both have older siblings who previously participated in Summer Scholars, so they understood how the program operated. The work was split evenly between them, and they used software such as Microsoft Exel to document their research. “It was good to have a partnership,” Sacks said.
“Both girls had an innate love of science, and they were excited about every aspect,” said Rafailovich. “This positive attitude was contagious, and everyone in the laboratory liked working with them.” She added that the judges at the Long Island fair were impressed by the amount of data the students presented on their posters and how well they explained their research.

After graduating from HAFTR this spring, both young women will spend a year in Israel. Schein at Midreshet Harovah and Sacks at the Torah v’Avodah Institute, both of which are in Jerusalem. Schein then plans to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while Sacks plans to go to Columbia University.

“It’s a big a deal to have made it as [Intel fair] finalists,” Sacks said, emphasizing the two girls’ excitement.