Three Kennedy students present at L.I. Psychology Fair

Kennedy High School junior Claire Kelly spent three weeks last summer at the University of Chicago, delving deep into the human brain, examining the connection between impulsivity and drug addiction.

Senior Rachel Mashal, the class of 2016 salutatorian, put fruit flies on a restricted diet to determine whether lower food intake would ward off drug addiction — specifically caffeine addiction — while also extending life. (As it turn out, it did both.)

And senior Alexis Tillman hung out on lonely street corners (with either her mom or dad nearby) for weeks, filming homeless panhandlers to determine what, precisely, might persuade charitable passersby to give them loose change or even a dollar or two.

The three, all participants in Kennedy’s prestigious Advanced Science Research Program, were recently invited to present the findings of their studies at the Long Island Psychology Fair, an Island-wide forum. Only 29 students from throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties had research papers accepted at the fair.

The forum was held at Roslyn High School on Jan. 7. Students had to make 10-minute PowerPoint presentations. Winners were recognized in six categories: health psychology, cognitive psychology, interdisciplinary psychology, biopsychology, social psychology and developmental psychology. Mashal took home a first-place prize and Kelly an honorable mention.

Claire Kelly
Age: 16
From: Merrick
Activities: World Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Foundation, school representative.

Last summer Kelly worked in the University of Chicago’s highly regulated Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory, which investigates the causes and consequences of drug and alcohol abuse by measuring the physiological and behavioral effects of “acute” doses of psychoactive drugs in human volunteers, according to its website.

In the case of the experiment that Kelly helped out with, subjects were given very low doses of methamphetamine, a white, odorless power that is “extremely addictive,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.