The Intel Corporation recently named 66 students from Long Island, including two from Jericho, semifinalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. This award, America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition, is often referred to as the Junior Nobel Prize. Over 1,590 students applied for this award and only 300 were named semifinalists.

David Yao, a 17-year-old senior at Jericho High School, was named a semifinalists for his project entitled Segregation of Long and Short Chain Polystyrene.

David attended a summer program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and discussed project ideas with his professors and mentors there - Professor Rafailovich, Professor Sokolov and a computer programming specialist Professor Gersappe.

"My research is about polymers, which are a long chain of repeating units," said David. "I observed in my research that usually in a mix of polymers, some polymers will segregate to the surface and we wanted to control this segregation. If you have shorter polymers on the surface, the surface is more elastic. If you have longer polymers it is stiff and it does not stick well. Therefore, we want to control the relative amount of each polymer on the surface."

David found that water has a great impact on this type of segregation and he plans on continuing his research with this new information.

Although he is still waiting for responses from the many Ivy League colleges to which he applied, David hopes to attend Harvard University in the fall and major in biology or pre-med. His ultimate goal is to attend medical school.

Rakhi Garg, a resident of Old Westbury and a senior at Jericho High School, was also named an INTEL semifinalist for her research on Pregnancy in Patients with Established Malignant Glioma. "This project seemed basic for me to do myself," said Rakhi. "I could do most of the research and the background information. Other projects were really detailed with a lot of scientific information."

Rakhi had attended a summer internship program at Brown University in Rhode Island and worked with Dr. Prakafh Sampath, a surgeon at the hospital who is a distant relative of Rakhi's. Following his suggestion, Rakhi looked at approximately 500 patients' charts and studied pregnancy in women who already had brain tumors. "Usually research is done when someone finds out they are pregnant and then find out that they have a brain tumor," explained Rakhi. "In this scenario, the women already knew they had a brain tumor, then got pregnant and chose to keep their babies." Although Dr. Sampath made the topic suggestion, Rakhi came up with the hypothesis and conclusion herself.

She followed the outcome of the pregnancies and then followed the babies and mothers for approximately two months after birth and all of the babies were normal.

This study is complete and Rakhi started a second paper over the summer, which she is still in the process of researching.

Rakhi is still waiting to hear from the many colleges that she applied to, but her first choice is Brown University. " I love the atmosphere there," said Rakhi, who hopes to follow in her family members footsteps, including Rakhi's mother and grandfather, and become a doctor.

Each student will receive $1,000 in recognition of his or her scientific achievements. In addition, each school that placed a semifinalist in the competition will receive $1,000 per semifinalist to be used in support of the school's science and math education programs.

Forty of the 300 total semifinalists will be chosen and announced on Jan. 31 as finalists. These students will take an all-expense paid trip to Washington D.C. to attend the Science Talent Institute where whey will participate in final judging and compete for college scholarship totaling $530,000. The winner will be selected based on interviews and announced on March 12 at a black-tie banquet.