By:Karen Bonnet
Oceanside high school senior qualifies for world-renowned science fair
Described by his teachers as an exceptional student with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, 17-year-old Oceanside High School senior Matthew Satriano has reached another milestone in his pursuit for knowledge.
He's already valedictorian and soon he and his project, Determinal Sequences, will be competing in this year's Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in San Jose, California May 6-12.
Along with 32 other high school students, he will represent Long Island at this year's fair, where 1,000 students from across the US and some 50 countries will come together for six days to compete to win scholarships, establish new collaborations for the future, experience exciting cultural exchange and gain recognition from their peers.
I'm not really sure what to expect, said Satriano, a humble teen who has been making the contest rounds with the math project since November.
At the competition he can expect to see 1,200 judges milling about the large convention center located in the heart of Silicon Valley, asking questions and deciding who will be one of the two overall winners to receive an all-expense-paid trip to the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. He can also expect to be in the running for hundreds to thousands of dollars in scholarship money that will be awarded at various stages of the six-day long competition.
But the possibility of winning prizes and scholarships isn't what drives Satriano to create number theories. I just like math as art, like painting, he said. And the fact that he will be traveling further west than Ohio is almost as exciting as competing, he said.
His choice of projects substantiates his love for just getting lost in the many different twists and turns that mathematic exercises yield. He chose to explore the outcome of a set of four consecutive numbers from a doubly infinite set of numbers when put into a certain formula. He determined, after years of trials, that only one set of four adhered to the theory he created.
It doesn't necessarily have any practical application, both he and his mother, Susan, admit. It's an intellectual exercise, he said. His mother, who teaches math to adults, said it could possibly be used in computer programming. Finding a cure for cancer, according to his mom, is not what he's interested in right now.
He just loves doing this, she said. My husband and I try to encourage him to use his knowledge to help people. We're hoping he'll work with a chemist and help find a cure for cancer or become a professor and pass his knowledge onto others. His father is also a math teacher.
By going to the fair, the practical application of his project may be discovered by a member of the scientific community and that's one of the most important aspects of the fair, according to Melanie Krieger, president of LISEF. Regardless of whether he wins, the trip to Sweden, one of the many scholarships or goes home empty handed, he will have been given a rare opportunity, she said. These kids will be talking to world-renowned people from many parts of the globe. Their experience will be highlighted by the students they will meet from all over the globe, and they will be talking to world-renowned people, including representatives of the Nobel Prize Ceremony, she said.
He will continue to rub shoulders with some of the world's most respected intellectuals come September. He's chosen to attend Princeton after receiving early acceptance there, MIT and Harvard because the people at Princeton seemed down to earth and world-renowned mathematician Andrew Wiles is a faculty member. There he believes he will continue to find answers to some of world's most unique questions.
