Three hundred of America's high school seniors, including four from Jericho, were recently honored for their excellence in science as they reached the semifinals of the Intel Science Talent Search (STS). Often considered the "Junior Nobel Prize," the Intel STS is America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition.

"Intel is committed to being a catalyst for change in the effort to improve science and math education," said Carlene Ellis, Intel vice president and director of education. "At a time when America's students are ranked below their international peers in science and math, the Intel STS provides the opportunity to recognize the competition's participants and their schools for the outstanding results they've achieved."

The STS semifinalists were selected from 1,562 applicants, with females representing 48 percent of the total. The students represent 31 states, Washington D.C. and Guam, and range in age from 16 to 19.

Students were judged based 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 Medical Center oversaw the judging process. Science Service, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the understanding and appreciation of science through publications and educational programs, has administered the program since its inception in 1942.

Although there were four semi-finalists from Jericho, nine students entered and all dedicated a lot of time and hard work to the project. Entrants included Matthew Chung, Dhruva Kothari, David Robbins, Ankur Tanna, Aprajita Mattoo, Lisa Marx, Bari Sielfogel, Elaine Shum and Blake Eger.

Elaine Shum, one of four semi-finalists, worked on her project entitled Combined Effects of Herpes Viral Oncolytic Therapy and Chemotherapy in the Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer for the past two-years. Through her research, she attempted to find a new treatment for pancreatic cancer.

"Herpes viruses were genetically altered so they could directly kill cancer cells," Shum said about the methods of her research. "I used those viruses in combination with chemotherapy in order to kill pancreatic cancer."

She developed the idea with help from her mentor Dr. Yuman Fong from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Shum also worked on her project with Niraj Gusani.

"The results showed that this experiment worked in some cell lines and not in others," said Shum whose hypothesis stated that this would work all of the time.

Shum hopes to attend Princeton University and study biology, a field that she chose because of her dad, Dr. Kee Shum.

Bari Spielfogel researched and created her project entitled The Busguard: A Child Safety Device for School Buses, which is a device for school buses that prevents sleeping children from being left on school buses.

Using infrared beams, the device counts people as they get on and off the bus and alerts the driver to the number of people on the bus.

"My project uses software that is programmed on the computer to determine how many people have crossed," said Spielfogel, who started building it for a science project in tenth grade and kept working on it. "I got the idea from reading newspaper articles about sleeping children being left on school buses."

Spielfogel got help from her mentor, Professor Lazaros Pavlidis from the New York Institute of Technology. She plans to continue working on the Busguard and hopes to market and sell it one day. "I am going to keep working on it. I hope to market it and sell it eventually." She will be attending the University of Pennsylvania in September and plans to study engineering.

David Robbins researched a project entitled Effect of Animal Assisted Therapy on Physiological and Psychological Measures in a Population of a Chronic Skilled Nursing Facility. His project tested the effects of animal assisted therapy. "The purpose was to see if it improves quality of life for patients in nursing homes," said Robbins. "We used dogs and we measured physiological parameters, which is blood pressure, pulse and reduction of stress. We also measured behavioral parameters and observed behaviors such as a number of smiles during the session with the dog, as another example."

Robbins, along with help from his mentor Dr. Jain Chill, recruited and trained five dog teams and worked out of North Shore Hospital's Center for Extended Care.

"We found that sometimes it lowered blood pressure and sometimes it raised it because they got excited," said Robbins, who worked on this project for about two years. "The hypothesis did not work out the way we thought it would. We thought it would improve quality of life and happiness all of the time."

Robbins' got the idea for this topic when he was much younger. "After I had surgery when I was younger, my parents bought me a dog and it served therapeutic value," he said. "I did not think about it then because I was so young, but then as I got older and was thinking of research projects, I thought of that. I realized that I could measure something out of it."

Being named an Intel semi-finalist runs in the Robbins family blood as his brother, a 1996 Jericho graduate, was also named an Intel semi-finalist. "It feels great to be named a semi-finalist," said Robbins. "It was a long and difficult process but I learned a lot and met nice people along the way. There were nine total entrants from Jericho and four won. I did not think I was going to win because the other five students had great work. Their papers were unbelievable. They need to be recognized as well because they did a great job," concluded Robbins, who will attend Drew University in New Jersey in the fall.

Dhruva Kothari wrote his paper for Intel on the Effect of Acridine Orange on the Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Channel for which he tested the chemical Acridine Orange on an ion channel in the nervous system. "The nervous system is an electrical system and these ion channels are important," said Kothari. "For something that is so important, we know very little about it. By testing the chemical I tried to understand a little more and help the anesthetic world understand a little more about this channel."

For the first few months Kothari did some bookwork and research on the topic and then worked with his mentor, Dr. Dilger from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, to do the experiments.

"My professor has been working on this for 30 years," said Kothari. "I will continue the research in college. First I will figure out where exactly on the channel this drug binds. By figuring that out, I will figure something out about the channel."

Kothari is still waiting to hear from many colleges that he applied to including Yale University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

"It feels great to be named a semi-finalist," said Kothari. "I have gotten treated really nice and it feels good to get recognized for what I did. Even if I wasn't named a semi-finalist, I would still be proud of my work. I got the same knowledge out of this experience if I was named a semifinalist or not."

Each semifinalist will receive $1,000 in recognition of his or her scientific achievements. In addition, the school will receive $1,000 per semifinalist in support of science and math programs.

The list will be trimmed to 40 finalists on Jan. 30. The finalists will receive an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. where they will compete for college scholarships totaling $530,000. The finalists will undergo a rigorous interview process, with winners announced at a banquet on March 11.

"This year we had nine students who entered with incredibly, wonderful projects," said Jericho's Independent Research teacher Allen Sachs. "This year's group of nine entrants from Jericho were probably the scientifically-strongest group of research projects that we have had come out of the school. The fact that four were named as Intel Semi-finalists just reinforces the fact of how competent they all really are as science researchers. The quality of all nine papers was well beyond our previous years entries as a group."