Tanmay Chheda, Chris Lamberti, Sean Mehra and Jeffrey Reitman, all sophomores at Jericho High School, were featured in last week's paper as regional winners in the 2002 Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Awards competition for their entry entitled "The Bright New Future of Circuitry: A Focus on Brittle Starfish Microlenses to Improve Optical Computing."

Earlier this week, the Jericho students were told they won first place nationally in their age group. They were the only students from New York State to win.

The students created a website with a laptop computer that they won after being named regional winners. A national judging committee reviewed the websites along with the original entries and selected eight finalist teams, one first place and one second place from each of the four grade-level categories. Chheda, Lamberti, Mehra and Reitman will all be invited to the awards ceremony weekend in Washington D. C. June 12-16. Each student also received a $10,000 United States Savings Bond for their outstanding efforts.