Yorktown, Ossining Students Secure Top Science Honors
Several area high school students scored top marks in the “Olympics of science competitions” — the recent Westchester Science and Engineering Fair, held at Sleepy Hollow High School.
The competition is the regional precursor to the national Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which will be held in Pittsburgh from May 13-19. That competition will bring together more than 1,500 students from 65 countries.
The competition also funneled area students in to the International Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering, Environment) Project Olympiad.
Yorktown High School secured seven of the 16 spots at the two fairs. Laura Anderson, Frank and Lily Cao, Kathleen Mavrommatis and Priya Mohindra will attend the Pittsburgh event.
Miwa Wenzel, Tanya Tiwari and David (Linus) Hamann will attend ISWEEEP, which will be held in Houston from May 3-8.
Dozens of other Yorktown students also secured awards at the fair. Forty-four Yorktown students participated in total.
Also securing top marks was Ossining High School, which produced five of the Westchester Fair’s 13 finalist projects — three individual finalists and two team finalists.
Five is the maximum number of projects that can come from one school under the Westchester competition’s rules.
The Ossining projects spanned everything from neurocognitive performance in athletics to an analysis of declining eel populations in the Hudson River.
Representing Ossining in the individual categories will be Amelia Clements, Katie Mangialardi and Maite Antola. Pam Brigleb and Amanda Bernstein, and Catie Contie and Adam Illowsky, will travel to Pittsburgh to compete as pairs in the team category.
Including those advancing to the next level, Ossining students collected 48 awards: six first-place awards; 12 second-place awards; five third-place awards; ten fourth-place awards; and 15 additional special awards.
Lakeland School District also had several winners. Sam Nadell placed second in the earth science category and also received the American Meteorological Association award. Tyler Cohen placed fourth in the physics and astronomy category.
Two other students received special awards: Michael Perrone, winner of the RICOH award and the Intel Computer Science award, and Troy Hugick, recipient of the American Meteorological Association award.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.