Nineteen students from high schools on the North Shore were named semifinalists in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search, with four coming from Roslyn High School.
The competition, formerly sponsored by Westinghouse and then Intel before its current sponsor, pharmaceutical company Regeneron, is run each year by the Society for Science and the Public, with the goal of finding solutions to the world’s challenges from budding young scientists.
From an initial 1,804 applications, 300 students across the country and other parts of the world were named scholars in the 2022 contest, with 49 being from Long Island. The 300 scholars and their schools will be awarded $2,000 each.
Roslyn High School’s Lindsay Fabricant, Maya Rose Groothuis, Harshita Sehgal and Han Byur Youn were named semifinalists for their research projects. Youn’s research explored voting trends and the responsibility for people to cast their ballots while Groothuis’ research shined a light onto environmental efficacy beliefs and the role they play in relation to climate change.
“I’m so proud of these fabulous four,” Allyson Weseley, Roslyn school district’s coordinator of secondary research, said in a statement. “Research was made more challenging by the pandemic, but they persevered and rolled over every obstacle in their paths.”
Five students from the Great Neck school district were also selected as semifinalists. North High’s Olivia Yeroshalmi and Renee Zbizika were awarded the distinction, while South High’s Karly Chan, Jeremy Nathaniel Kotlyar and Isabel Wang were also named semifinalists.
Jacqueline Atchley, Abraham Daniel Franchetti and Alexandra Vesselinov were the three semifinalists named from Port Washington’s Paul D. Schreiber High School. Franchetti also tied in politics to his research, analyzing that and the nation’s economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic.
Manhasset High School and Herricks High School each had three students named Regeneron semifinalists. Rachel Lee, Shivani Tejas and Allison Zhang represented Manhasset, while Caitlin Chheda, Aanya Goel and Roshni Patel represented Herricks.
Additionally, North Shore High School’s Evelyn McCreery was named the lone semifinalist from her school. McCreery received praise from school officials for her work on researching the health effects of chemicals leached from plastic into food by using a fruit fly.
“We are proud and overjoyed of Evelyn’s accomplishments,” North Shore Principal Eric Contreras said in a statement. “She is a talented scholar-athlete and researcher. Our immediate global challenges remind us that our local initiatives to develop the scientists and innovators of tomorrow are more important than ever. The entire North Shore community celebrates her on this high honor.”
“Congratulations to this year’s 300 Regeneron Science Talent Search scholars for their remarkable contributions and discoveries in the STEM field,” Regeneron’s senior vice president of corporate communications and citizenship, Christina Chan, said. “We are honored to celebrate this new generation of problem solvers who have demonstrated the depth of their innovative thinking, commitment to continuous learning, and ability to tackle global challenges in creative ways.”
On Jan. 20, according to Regeneron, 40 of the 300 scholars across the country and other parts of the world will be named finalists. A weeklong competition will be held from March 10 to 16 with the finalists competing for more than $1.8 million in awards.
A total of 39 students on Long Island and 14 in North Shore school districts were named semifinalists in 2021.
