On January 15, six students from Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School received word that they had been selected as semifinalists of the 62nd Annual Intel Science Talent Search. The six semifinalists represent the most ever from the school district.

Melanie Krieger, director of research for the school district, happily told Nina Bai, Stacey Kallem, Tara Kelly, Janaki Parameswaran, Tedi Setton, and Mandeep Virdi that they were among the 300 students nationwide selected as semifinalists. Both the students and the school will receive matching awards of $1,000. From the group of 300 semifinalists, 40 finalists will be chosen to attend the Science Talent Institute in Washington, D.C. from March 6 - 11, 2003 to compete for the top prize, a $100,000 scholarship.

"There is a buzz throughout the Plainview-Old Bethpage School District on the heels of this exciting announcement," said Dr. Martin Brooks, superintendent. "To be honored as one of only 300 students throughout the entire country is an exceptional achievement. I commend these six students and all of our science research students for their dedication and hard work."

Nina Bai entitled her project "Synthesis and Characterization of Well-ordered Thin Films of Decanethiolated Gold Nanoparticles." "I made these nano-particles, which are very small particles," said Bai. "I then made thin film from them and used various techniques and instruments to measure the thin film and see how the particles are arranged."

Bai found that using certain methods can form very well ordered, thin films. "That is good because it is good for conducting electricity," said Bai who explained that it can be used in microelectronics.

Bai worked with Dr. Rafailovich in the lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "It feels good to be named a semi-finalist," she said.

Stacey Kallem entitled her project "Self-esteem and Schematic Processing as Precursors of Depression in Children." She examined the causes of depression in young children and looked at three different factors. "I looked at self-esteem, negative self-schema, which are thought filters that cause people to focus more on negative environmental stimuli and depressive symptoms," said Kallem.

She worked in a lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook that focused on depression and read many articles on this subject. "The idea came to me as something that was missing in the body of research that I had been looking at," said Kallem, who worked with Dr. Klein as her mentor.

Parts of her data Kallem expected to find and others she didn't. "I found correlations between the negative self-schema and depression," said Kallem. "There are no correlations between the negative self-schema and self-esteem, which I did not expect."

"It feels great to be named a semi-finalist," she said. "It is so fulfilling because we worked so hard over the summer. It is a nice feeling for what you did to be validated."

Tara Kelly entitled her project "Genetic Variation in a Sexually Selected Male Trait in Drosophila." She worked with fruit flies. "I tried to determine something about their sexual selection," said Kelly. "Fruit flies have different courtship displays. It was a zoology project, which I think was kind of different." Kelly worked with Dr. True at State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Her main purpose was to work with digital imaging and morphametrics, which is using computers to measure the size of a wing spot on fruit flies. "It was a way to see if females prefer males with smaller or larger spots," said Kelly. "It is a general theory about how things evolve. I also worked with the computer to measure the spots."

Kelly said that she didn't know what to expect when she started her research because nothing has been done like this in the past. "I was lucky and found that a couple of things that I found did work. I found genetic variation. I was very excited that I found out that it worked," she said.

"I was so excited. I was the last one to find out out of the six of us. Everyone was already in the principal's office celebrating," said Kelly.

Janaki Parameswaran's project was entitled "Initiation of Vascular Tissue in the Primordia of Dioscorea alata and Dioscorea nipponica."

"My project was in the botany category," said Parameswaran. "I was looking to see how veins grew in plants. I found different patterns in each species. I studied three species. Dioscorea was the genus that I worked with."

She found that veins don't grow just straight up or down, but they grew in a dash line and then they connect. "People haven't discussed this in any research," she said.

Dr. Geeta Bharathan at Stony Brook was her mentor. Parameswaran is going to continue the research and look at more species.

Tedi Setton's project was entitled "Isolating the Effect of Polymer Mechanical Properties on Cardiac Fibroblasts Morphology, Proliferation and Growth."

"I was looking at how the mechanical properties of different polymer surfaces affects the growth structure and the function of cells," she said. For example, with heart valves, you need a single layer as cell growth so it doesn't activate an immune response. So if you can control the growth in the structure of the cell, you might be able to get a mono-layer of growth."

Her project has application for bioengineering. Setton worked with Dr. Miriam Rafailovich at Stony Brook.

Setton also just found out that her lab is presenting at the American Physical Society March meeting. "I would be slotted to give a 15-minute oral presentation," she said. Setton plans to continue research in college.

Mandeep Virdi's project is entitled "The Synthesis of a Taxoid Porphyrin Conjugate for Selective Drug Delivery."

She was working on designing a new anti-cancer drug. "There are three current problems with anti-cancer drugs. One is that they are not water-soluble so you can't have them in tablet form. Another one is that cells become resistant to the drugs over time and the third reason, and most important, is that they also harm the healthy cells as well as the cancer cells," said Virdi.

Her project was designed to try and overcome those problems. She worked with Dr. Iwao Ojima. Virdi might continue research on this topic in the future, but she definitely plans to focus on doing some sort of scientific research in college.

"I was shocked that I was named a semifinalist," she said.

This year's semifinalists were selected from 1,581 applicants, with females representing 43 percent of the total. The students are from 47 states, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C. and range in age from 15 to 19. Students were judged on their individual research ability, scientific originality and creative thinking. The research projects cover all disciplines of science, including chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, social science and biology. All Intel STS entries were reviewed and judged by top scientists from a variety of disciplines. Dr. Andrew Yeager of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is the judging chairman.

Melanie Krieger is so proud of her students. "This shows how hard work and determination can be rewarded," said Kreiger. "It was beautiful to see these young ladies doing research and supporting one another. I think that is why they did so well. There was so much support."

Mary Lou O'Donnell, a research teacher at the high school is proud of all 12 Plainview-Old Bethpage students who entered the Intel contest. "All of the students who entered have been part of the program for four years," said O'Donnell.