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Overcast A quintet of Five Towns students are Siemens semifinalists
Three juniors from Lawrence High School and two seniors from HAFTR are honored
Lawrence High School seniors Andrew Chen, Alexandra Tse and Sneha Chittabathini, and Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns And Rockaway (HAFTR)seniors Wade Moller and Eric Hirsch were named semifinalists in the 2011 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology.
Chen, Tse and Chittabathini worked as a team at the Garcia Center at Stony Brook university under the direction of Dr. Miriam Rafailivich.
Their project revolved around developing new methods of incorporating graphene — sheets of single-layer carbon atoms — into solar caells.
Miller and Hirsch also conducted their research at Stony Brook under Dr. Rafalovich's guidance. The students examined the ability of graphene and graphene oxide to promote cell growth and possibly be used as an alternative to stem cells as replacement tissue for the human body.
Daniel Goldsmith, a North Woodmere resident who attends North Shore Hebrew Academy, was also a semifinalist for his particle physics research.
He provided a new, successful, method of analyzing a novel property in the Quark Gluon Plasma.
The nation’s leading original research competition in math, science and technology for high school students the Siemens Competition is administered annually by the College Board, and awards college scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 in individual and team categories. An all-time record of 2,436 students registered to enter the 2011-‘12 Siemens Competition for an unprecedented 1,541 projects submitted.
There were four regional finalists from Long Island who will go head-to-head presenting their research with peers across the nation. Regional Finals begin on Nov. 4. Winners of the regional events are invited to compete at the National Finals at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Dec. 3-5.
