By JOSEPH KELLARD
These and other outbreaks elsewhere further inspired Jennifer in her research of the disease. "All this current relevance in the field interested me, and enabled me to concentrate more on this project," said Jennifer, a junior at Oceanside High School who is known as Jen.
Thanks in part to this additional fuel, she can now lay claim to being the first OHS student to qualify for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world's largest pre-college science fair, in which 1,500 young scientists from nearly 50 countries gather annually. Moreover, Jen took third place in the microbiology category at this year's week-long competition in Indianapolis.
For her project, she researched and identified the specific region of the "effector" protein responsible for causing Legionellosis. The bacteria that causes the disease is waterborne, coming by way of the mist in air conditioners or a shower, and when it is breathed in, the effector protein tricks the cells so that they remain alive, unlike normal bacteria, and are able to replicate and cause Legionnaires' disease.
At the ISEF, Jen gave 13 oral presentations of her project to individual judges ‹ the same presentation she gave at two Long Island Science and Engineering Fair competitions that qualified her for the international competition. "I was really excited," she said, drawing out the "really," about her recognition in Indianapolis, where students range in age from 12 to 20 and compete for nearly $4 million in awards and scholarships.
"You're always proud of your kid when you get something like this," said Jen's father, Chris, who accompanied her to Indianapolis. "So it was really exciting for her and me."
Their excitement was fueled by the many hours and hard work Jen put into her project. At Columbia an average of four days a week and 10 hours a day, she undertook yeast and bacterial studies under her mentor, Dr. Nadim Shohdy of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. "At first it was difficult understanding a lot of the terminology involved," Jen said. "So I had to get the foundation down first. And also, the experiments don't always work, and it was very frustrating."
"She's given up all of her summers, which is a big commitment," said her mother, Gina Caso, about Jen's research at Columbia, which stretches back to her freshman year. "She ... put in long days, leaving at 6 in the morning and coming home at 7 at night."
Rene Barcia, coordinator of the science research department at OHS since 2001, said Schindler has "the total package. She has the intelligence and the poise a speaker needs to articulate her research to an audience, and has a very in-depth knowledge of her project. ... Her research really was at the doctoral level."
Jen became interested in researching Legionnaires' disease after reading about how it first broke out at an American Legion conference in Philadelphia in 1976. The rare disease is often misdiagnosed and treated as normal pneumonia, she explained, quoting statistics off the top of her head: 4 to 20 percent of community-acquired pneumonia cases are Legionnaires' disease, and it causes some 1,500 deaths annually in the U.S.
The next step in her project is to work on a medical application by targeting a medicine at the effector protein she identified, "with hope and potential to prevent this disease and the fatalities it causes," Jennifer said. She plans to return to Columbia for further research this summer, and will prepare for the nationwide Intel competition in November.
Jennifer was 10 when she first took a liking to earth science, and in eighth grade she was fascinated with biology. Her interest in science was encouraged by her mother, an internist, and particularly by her father, an associate professor of microbiology at Columbia who oversees immunology labs. "I would show my three kids science experiments and explain how things work when they were growing up," Chris said. "So all of my kids learned a certain respect and had an enthusiasm for science."
"My parents have always been very supportive and looked out for my best interest," said Jen. She also recognizes all of Barcia's help, from taking her on interviews at labs to visiting her at the Columbia lab to assisting her in Indianapolis. And if her recognition in the international competition weren't enough, Jennifer has a high place among Barcia's pantheon of students, which include several Intel semi-finalists and two who were published in peer review journals.
"Jen," Barcia said, "is one of the very few top students who have come through this science research program."
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