Saturday, June 14, 2025
Long Beach Public Schools has a robust science department, offering students a wide variety of classes and electives, including Science Research, in which students in the eighth through 12th grades tackle rigorous and impressive projects.
Each year, the Long Island sections of the Science Teachers Association of New York State sponsor an exhibit of science projects from students throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties. The exhibit, called the Long Island Science Congress, was held at the Cradle of Aviation in Uniondale on April 7 and 8. Students from more than 80 schools competed, and this year, all 11 of Long Beach’s ninth-graders who entered the competition placed first, second or third.
“My first year here, we had one student that made it to the state competition,” Kristen Conklin-Kearney, the district’s Science Research coordinator, said. “This year we have seven kids that made it to states for multiple projects. Every single one of our grade nine researchers placed at the briefing symposium, which means that they beat out over 80 schools on Long Island.”
More than 850 projects were entered in this year’s Science Congress competition, and fewer than 20 were selected to advance to the state contest in Syracuse on June 8.
The competition is comprised of two divisions, junior and senior. The ninth graders compete in junior, and all 11 Long Beach students placed there, with six grabbing first. In the senior division, three students placed, with one winning first. All told, Long Beach placed in the top 2 percent of all the students who competed.
“This is pretty much the first time that we’ve been able to have so much success in research in a long time at the school,” Conklin-Kearney, who’s in her second year in Long Beach’s Science Research program, said.
Long Beach sophomore Sydney Bergstein is one of the students advancing to the state competition. Her project focused on how artificial intelligence can be inappropriately used to lower self-esteem in adolescent girls. Her project had to pass through the Institutional Review Board process, which was required since she was planning to use human subjects.
After she was given approval, Bergstein surveyed 30 female students at Long Beach High School about their interactions and use of AI. She gathered her results, compared them, and ran a significance test to get the final results on her findings.
“I feel like artificial intelligence is something that’s so new, and it’s evolving so much, especially over the past few years,” Bergstein said. “I know that’s something that hasn’t really been seen in competitions like this since it’s so new, and I was able to tie that into the self-esteem aspect of it, which I’m really passionate about. I thought it would just make for a good project overall.”
Other Long Beach students going to states include Shayna Tozer, Rylee Varian, Karina Rios, Sydney Olivo, Victoria Sinnona and Alyssa Malewicz. Sophomore Cassel Koss also competed, focusing on trying to find a way to grow plants more effectively for a growing population, without all the harmful aspects of fertilizers.
Koss sought to develop a method for replacing the carcinogenic components of fertilizers that are often found in food and drinking water.
“Fertilizers have a lot of harmful effects on the environment, and also humans,” she said. “I wanted to find a way to replace that, but also have the added benefits of growth to the plants. So, I used beneficial bacteria instead, and I added that to the plants, and I measured the diameter biomass and the leaf color.”
Vanessa Maltez, a junior, said she joined Science Research last year, adding that she enjoys the freedom it gives her to conduct research on projects she’s passionate about. For her project, she investigated gut microbiota, which involves the bacteria within the digestive tract.
“I was able to basically come up with a methodology in which I could test a popular food additive, Red 40, on gut microbiome bacteria,” she said. “Because of (Science) Research, I feel like I’ve been able to investigate all these problems that I’m really passionate about and curious about. I just really like that I can contribute findings to that research as a high school student. I find it really nice.”
Bergstein, Koss and Maltez also were named finalists in the New York State Science Engineering Fair, and Koss a semifinalist at the Long Island Science Engineering Fair. Over the summer, Maltez is planning to attend NYU’s Simons Science Explorations Program and has been paired with a chemist to continue research next year. Bergstein will work one-on-one with a social worker, and Koss will continue her work with hydroponics, collaborating with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories.
