Scarsdale Students Shine at Science Fair and in Science Olympiad

On Saturday March 12, a group of fourteen science research students from Scarsdale High School competed at the 11th annual Westchester Science and Engineering Fair at Sleepy Hollow High School in Tarrytown. The students competed with 274 other students from a number of area high schools. The wonderful news is that each one of the fourteen students took home a prize.

Here are the students names and information about their rewards:

Dustin Brout was awarded a Panera Research Award that was given to deserving projects involving food.

Curan Mehra was awarded a Patriot Risk Management Award given to students with outstanding projects in the category of Behavior.

Luke Moretti won a Philips Award for Exceptional Research, which was awarded to projects that focused on improving the quality of people's lives.

Jackie Koo won one of the Stockholm Junior Water Prizes, awarded to top water-related projects as well as the Scenic Hudson Award which was awarded to one project with the most promise of improving the environment.

Spencer Lee, a junior, was awarded one of the ASM International Foundations Awards for "Materials Science" in Chemistry or Engineering. He was also one of two students to win a GENIUS Olympiad Award, which will allow him to enter the prestigious GENIUS Olympiad, being held this year June 26-30 in Oswego, NY.

Julia Deutsch won an award from the American Psychological Association for an outstanding behavioral research project. In addition, she was one of the 4th place winners in the Behavior Category.

Jason Samwick won a Mu Alpha Theta Award for a project involving the use of mathematics in a challenging, original, thorough, and creative investigation. In addition, he took 4h place in the Mathematics category.

The following students also won 4th place overall in their categories:

Grant Lo for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Sahil Lalwani for Medicine and Health, Jared Frank for Biochemistry and Jeremy Frank for Animal Science.

Radhika Rastogi won one of the US Metric Association Awards given for exceptional projects displaying significant use of metric measurement. In addition, Radhika was one of the 3rd place overall winners in the behavioral category.

In addition Roger Pelligrini, a junior, was award a third place medal in the category of Cellular and Molecular Biology.

Lastly, but not least, Alyson Favilla, a junior was awarded second place in the category of Animal Science.

Congratulations to all the Scarsdale High School winners.

Middle School Science Olympiad:

On Saturday March 12, the Scarsdale Middle School was host to the Middle School Science Olympiad, with participation from over 600 students from the lower Hudson Valley. Students participated in a host of events designed to emphasize the problem solving aspects of science, further the understanding of science concepts and build teamwork.

Among the challenging events offered on Saturday were:

Building events: Junkyard Challenge, Storm the Castle, Car of Tomorrow, Tower, Battery Buggy and Bottle Rocket

Lab events: Experimental Design, Can't Judge a Powder, Microbe Mission and Optics

Testing events: Compute This, Ornithology, Write It Do It, Road Scholar, Ecology, Dynamic Planet, Shock Value, Fossils and Solar System

As the team prepares for the New York State tournament, in addition to the above events, they will need to prepare to compete in Anatomy (testing), Awesome Aquifer (lab and building), Disease Detective (testing), Science Crime Busters (lab) and Sumo Bot (building).

The final standings in the competition were:

• 1st -- South Orangetown (Rockland)
• 2nd --Scarsdale A Team
• 3rd -- Ardsley
• 4th -- Scarsdale B Team
• 5th -- Bronxville

Only one team from each school can compete in the NYS tournament, which means that the region will be represented by one team from each of these schools: South Orangetown, Scarsdale, Ardsley and Bronxville.

Putting on an event of this magnitude takes a community effort. In addition to the coaches who have been working with the Scarsdale teams, the entire Middle School Science Department was involved in setting up the event Friday night. On Saturday, many of the Middle School Science Department teachers volunteered their time to help with events, as well as Susan Leach, Kristin Rallis and Michelle Ciconne. Steve Rambone and the Student Organization served as tour guides helping teams find their way to events throughout the day. They also sold candy, pizza and hot dogs to hungry participants. The Middle School custodial staff did their part as well, opening up the building, monitoring the "health" of the building and then cleaning and shutting down the building at the end of the day.

Here are the 2010-11 Science Olympiad participants:

Coaches: Jay Gandelman (also the Lower Hudson Valley Regional Coordinator), Cristine Gilliland, Ken Raff, Jeff Tuttle, Laurie Ciccone, Kristin Martin and Vanessa Denike

Students: Daniel Beitler (6), Philip Conde (6), Jacob Denelsky (8), Lauren Evans (6), David Frank (8-Team Captain), William Gao (6), Nakul Garg (8), Rohan Gharekhan (6), Claire Gillespie (6), Rahul Gosain (8), Ben Hezi (6), James Jasuf (6), Jon Koenig (6), Connie Lam (8-Team Captain), Dexin Li (6), Samantha Lin (7), Ben Mayer (6), Martha Naarendorp (6), Sydney Prince (7), Keshav Rastogi (6), Austin Serling (8), Arvind Sindhwani (6), Sandra Suarez (7), David Szanto (7), Omar Thenmalai (6), Victoria Tomalin (7), Ambika Venkatakrishnan (6), Sarah Weintraub (7), Adam Wolf (6), James Xu (6), Grant Yasen (6) and Alex Yearley (8)