By:Jennifer Marino
Shay learned that he was the one semifinalist from South Side High School on Wednesday, Jan. 14. Now he has to wait until Jan. 28 to find out if he-s a finalist. His research project is entitled, Luring German Cockroaches Using Aggregation Pheromones.
Shay was changing for track practice when one of his science teachers came to get him and brought him to research teacher Richard Kurtz. Shay assumed that all the students with Intel projects would be there, and together they would look at the list of semifinalists on the Internet. Instead, Kurtz told Shay that he was a semifinalist. I jumped up and down and hugged people, said Shay.
As a ninth-grader in a new country, switching languages from French to English, he found that the hissing Madagascar cockroaches in his science classroom offered inspiration. Kurtz mentioned that no one had done any research on them yet. Shay did a search on cockroaches on the Internet and found only pest-control Web sites.
He-s an incredibly inquisitive kid, said Kurtz, who added that Shay is well-rounded and a pleasure to teach.
Shay found that German cockroaches do the most damage to crops, and decided to focus his research on them. In his preliminary research, he found that the insects can mutate in ways that help them survive the poisons meant to kill them. About a year ago, he started the research for his Intel project, which showed that pheromones from the insect-s fecal matter can be used to attract them to traps, reducing the amount of toxic products needed to kill them.
Newly hatched cockroaches are so small that Shay had to rig up a special aquarium habitat to make sure they couldn-t escape. His experiment showed that the cockroaches were more attracted to a food source accompanied by the pheromones then by a food source without them.
When the Shay family moved from Canada, they chose Rockville Centre because of the schools, specifically South Side-s International Baccalaureate program. Shay has flourished at the school. He is captain of the track and cross-country teams, a member of the Art Club, an officer in the Ski Club, and a member of Students Against Destructive Decisions and Athletes Helping Athletes. During his freshman and sophomore years, he was on the FIRST Robotics team, and he helped found the Students United for Awareness Club. Earlier this year he was inducted into the National Honor Society.
He-s a good role model for other students, said Kurtz.
For the past three summers, Shay has worked at a children-s camp in Canada. He plans to return to his country for college next year at either McGill University in Montreal or the University of New Brunswick. He is contemplating several possible majors, including botany, environmental science and philosophy.
