Students Ella Wesson of Manhasset High School and Kyra McCreery of North Shore High School have been named finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search competition.
The nationwide 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.
Wesson and McCreery are two of 40 finalists who will receive $25,000 and travel to Washington, D.C., from March 5 to 11, where they will compete for more than $1.8 million in prizes.
Manhasset senior Wesson’s project, “Engineering One Layer of a Two-Dimensional Acoustic Band Gap Material and Reconstructing the Sound Pressure Field Using Acoustic Holography,” involves examining the properties of sound waves.
North Shore senior McCreery’s project, titled “Associations Between the Slowdown in North Atlantic Tropical-Cyclone Translation, Speed and Intensifying Storm Precipitation,” focuses on how hurricanes are slowing down, which results in increased precipitation in a given area.
The Manhasset school district tweeted congratulations to Wesson soon after the announcement.
Requests for comment from both schools were not returned.
The top 10 winners will be announced at a black-tie awards ceremony at the National Building Museum on March 10. Prizes will range from $40,000 to $250,000, resulting in more than $3 million total in funding from Regeneron.
