By Scott Brinton
Asked to say a little about herself, Driggin, 18, says she is Kennedy's yearbook editor, and she helped found the school's HOPE (Helping Our Planet Earth) club.
She fails to mention that she is Kennedy's salutatorian, with a 100.5 average, an Advanced Placement scholar, a National Merit Commended student and a Rensselaer Medalist (an honor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recognizing her as her high school's top math student). She also does not say that she is a member of the National, Spanish and Alpha Theta Math honor societies. Oh, and in 10th and 11th grades, she played JV basketball for Kennedy.
Barbi Frank, Driggin's science-research adviser at Kennedy, said the teen is so modest about her accomplishments that only her teachers and family members really know about them. She rarely speaks about them, and certainly never all at once. So, sitting down for an interview about her earning semifinalist status in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search was something of a nerve-racking experience for Driggin.
"She's just a very good girl," Frank said. "She's an incredible young lady. She doesn't like to brag about herself, but she did incredible research."
Each year, more than 1,600 of the country's best science students enter the Intel contest, hosted by the Society for Science & the Public and sponsored by the Intel Corporation. Three hundred entrants are named semifinalists.
For her Intel project, Driggin conducted research at the New York Obesity Research Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan last summer, clocking more than 300 hours. She worked side by side with her mentor at the center, Dr. Kathleen Keller, looking into the eating behavior that might contribute to the higher rate of obesity in African-American women than women of other races. She developed an eating-habit questionnaire that she distributed to 250 test subjects. The 50 questions included: How often do you count calories? Do you eat when you're upset?
Driggin quantified how "restrained" or "disinhibited" subjects were. Restrained subjects tended to moderate their eating behaviors, while disinhibited subjects ate at will. Restrained subjects, she found, showed a lower preference for fast food. But restrained behavior did not necessarily correlate with lower obesity rates. Driggin hypothesized that restrained behavior can lead to feelings of food deprivation, which can trigger binge eating, leading to obesity. At the same time, she found that disinhibited eating leads to obesity in almost all cases.
Driggin, whose favorite subjects are A.P. American literature and physics, hopes to attend the University of Pennsylvania next fall to study nutrition or psychiatry, or both. She said she wants to help women with eating disorders.
Her parents, Helene and Ted Driggin, are accountants. "She has just always liked science," said Helene. "She likes to learn for the sake of learning. Since middle school, she has always been a lover of science."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
