Superintendent’s Spotlight: Science Research Program Seniors
This week’s Superintendent’s Spotlight is shining on seven impressive seniors who will complete their extensive and in-depth three-year Science Research Program projects this spring — Reese Berman, Ashley Fitzgerald, Evan Grundfast, Abigail Kadus, Olivia Martino, Angie Ortiz, and Caroline Rourke.
The Science Research Program is one of our district’s most challenging and rigorous academic offerings. It is recognized by the NYS Board of Regents and offered in partnership with SUNY Albany, as part of the University in the High School program. Over the course of three years, high school students have the opportunity to participate in the scientific research community and to engage in authentic research of their own design. Students develop advanced research skills and life skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, time management and public speaking.
Science Research students must complete the following:
- Select and investigate topic of interest
- Develop skills in research protocol
- Read and summarize peer reviewed journal articles and critique professional scientific papers
- Practice formal presentations of peer reviewed articles or independent research
- Maintain a professional laboratory notebook
- Build a scientific portfolio
- Communicate with professionals
- Design and conduct original research
- Discuss and analyze results at symposia
- Write a final research paper
Reese Berman has been researching stress in secondary scholars with her mentor Dr. Mark Leary, PhD., Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Reese was initially interested in the effects of stress on high school students. She and Dr. Leary then narrowed the focus of her research, and she has since completed gathering data and is moving on to the next stage.
“My hypothesis was ‘students that take greater amounts of AP classes will experience more stress and lower life satisfaction outcomes,'” she explained. “At the moment, I’ve completed my research and now I’m analyzing my data.”
Reese is a Magna Cum Laude student and plans to study finance in college at a Big 10 school. She has a couple of college acceptances in hand and is waiting on a few more before making her choice.
Ashley Fitzgerald has been researching the effects of the ketogenic diet and adenosine on seizure control and stopping the progression of epilepsy. Her mentor is Dr. Detlev Boison, PhD., Vice Chair of Research and Training, Dept. of Neurosurgery at Rutgers University.
“I am proving that the ketogenic diet, which is where you do high fat, low carbs… will increase the chemical adenosine in your brain, which will prevent the epilepsy disease from worsening in your body,” said Ashley.
Ashley is a Summa Cum Laude student. Next year, she plans to major in biological sciences, minor in Spanish, and continue to do research, on the way to her ultimate goal of becoming a physician assistant. She picked up not only knowledge, but also invaluable skills from the Science Research Program.
“I’m taking away the presentation skills that I’ve gained; I’ve definitely gotten much better at it,” Ashley said. “Also, my ability to read hard research papers and cite them correctly.”
Evan Grundfast began his project looking at diagnoses of prion disease with his mentor Dr. David Jaeger, M.D., Ph.D., a neurologist at Crystal Run Healthcare. Working with Dr. Jaeger, Evan adjusted his project to focus on a specific type of prion disease called Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
“The human version of mad cow disease, essentially,” said Evan. “It’s the same thing, where it causes neurodegeneration. Your brain starts to have its neurons degenerate and die.”
Evan received nearly 1,200 de-identified patient cases from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University and is analyzing them for factors including age of onset and duration. Evan is thinking about applying to present his research at competitions at the end of his project. He’s planning to study pre-med with a minor in business and continuing research in college. Evan has enjoyed the opportunity that the Science Research program has afforded him to explore a topic of his own choice, as well as the new skills he’s built.
“[The program] builds a lot of great skills for continuing research into the future, having your own goals and being able to figure things out on your own,” Evan said. “It gives you a lot of freedom to just look at things that interest you.”
Abigail Kadus began her project interested in examining the effects of sleep deprivation on adolescents in high school. She and her mentor, Dr. Arturo Arrona-Palacios, Ph.D., Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical, fine-tuned her project to focus on the relationship between sleep and caffeine in teens.
“I wanted [to research] sleep in teenagers, but that is a really broad research area, so my mentor suggested looking at caffeine and adolescents, which is a relevant topic around me today,” Abigail said. “We completed a survey with all the different questions, and then I met with the health teachers in Warwick and got to distribute it into their seven classes.”
Abigail is also in the analysis phase of her project. She is a Summa Cum Laude student and will be attending Rowan University next year to play lacrosse and study biology on a pre-med track. Like her peers, Abigail has found the Science Research Program to be a great learning experience, particularly for someone headed along a path like hers.
“Going into college, it will really help me because I can already understand some of these complex articles, work with real data and real human data participants as well,” said Abigail.
Olivia Martino began her project planning to focus on the association between the use of isotretinoin and the risk of depression in adolescent patients with acne. Working with her mentor Dr. Rashek Kazi, MD., PhD., dermatologist at Crystal Run Healthcare, Olivia narrowed the scope of her research to the correlations between depression and acne.
“I couldn’t find enough data that supported whether isotretinoin caused depression or patients’ depression was brought on because they had acne,” she explained. She also agreed that besides the knowledge she gained about her topic, the useful skills that Science Research helps build will be applicable well beyond graduation. “And as far as skills I’ve learned, I would say how to work independently, and time management are two big ones.”
Olivia is a Summa Cum Laude student. She’s still making her college decision but plans to major in biology at whichever school she chooses.
Angie Ortiz has been working with her mentor Dr. Solveig Hanson, a research support specialist at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, to assess the winter hardiness of pea plants, by seeing how they handle winter conditions such as frost, air temperatures, and wind speeds.
“Basically, all the different factors that could affect them,” said Angie, who made numerous visits to Cornell during her project and observed both indoor and outdoor samples. “I’m finding the difference between what field data is going to give me for frost resistance (or winter hardiness) and what a controlled environment is going to give me.”
Angie, another Summa Cum Laude student, has loved the Science Research experience. She feels it’s a course of study that can deliver benefits for any student, now and for their future.
“I want to encourage more people to actually join the class, because it’s so great,” she said. “It gives you the chance to research something you really love, on your own terms and with whomever you prefer. It’s very freeing. It can lead you to so many places, too!”
In fact, the course led Angie to realize her love of agriculture. She plans to attain a PhD in a related field and, in November, applied to Cornell University. She heard back in December… she got in! She can’t wait to apply some of the technical and life skills she’s picked up.
“I’ve had to learn how to code for this, which I’m going to use throughout the rest of my life, so I’m grateful for that,” Angie said. “And I’ve learned that even though there are some obstacles that are never going to move for you, you can find a way around it,” Angie said. “You’ll find something even better. In cases where there’s an obstacle and I need help, I’ve also learned not to be afraid to reach out to a teacher here who I’ve never talked to before, or a professor from another university, I’ve grown in my… how should I say… in how I interact with people.”
Caroline Rourke has focused her project on CRISPR technology, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR allows research scientists to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms. Her mentor is Dr. Evan Merkhofer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Mount Saint Mary College.
“My survey looks at how exposed people are to the technology, and then how accepting they are of its usage,” said Caroline. “Then, looking at the correlation between the two.”
Caroline is distributing her finalized survey now and will collect data through March to analyze in the spring. Caroline is a Summa Cum Laude student and plans to major in chemical engineering in college. She has not yet made her final school choice.
Just like her six fellow seniors in the Science Research Program, Caroline has found the experience enriching in many ways, both academically and personally, and specifically noted the camaraderie that has developed between them over the past three years.
“I think that having each other as a group — because we have a pretty big senior group — helped us a lot, because we’re all going through the same thing,” said Caroline. “So just bouncing ideas off of each other, having almost like a team mindset, all of us working together has been helpful.”
The students will present their final projects during the annual Warwick Valley High School Science Research Symposium, which takes place in early June. If you want to learn more about the Science Research Program, you can visit this page of the WVCSD Curriculum Guide.
