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5 City Students Honored in Science
5 City Students Honored in Science
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/06/nyregion/5-city-students-honored-in-science.html
Students at New York City schools won 5 of the top 10 awards today in the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the nationwide competition for high school scientists.
A student from Greenwich, Conn., placed eighth.
The winner of the $12,000 first prize was 17-year-old Christopher R. Montanaro of South Paris, Me.
Mr. Montanaro, who said today that his high school ‘‘doesn’t even have a pipette’’ (a narrow glass tube used in laboratory work), completed a project last year in molecular genetics at a summer program for advanced high school students at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me.
The second-place winner was Sandy Chang, a 17-year-old who was born in Taiwan and who attends the Bronx High School of Science. Mr. Chang’s project involved building a telescope and taking visual and near- infrared photoelectric measurements of the intensity of light from four variable stars. 17 New Yorkers in Top 40
Seventeen students from New York State were among the 40 national winners, but Mr. Montanaro ended a four-year winning streak for New York City students.
The 10 top winners in the competition were announced at a formal dinner tonight by Dr. David Axelrod, the New York State Commissioner of Health and chairman of the judges.
The 40 national winners in this year’s competition arrived in the capital over the past few days to mount displays of their projects at the National Academy of Sciences and to meet President Reagan’s science adviser, George A. Keyworth 2d.
These were the five other metropolitan area students to place among the top 10:
- Eva L. Assimakopoulos, 16, of the Bronx High School of Science, won fifth place for a biochemistry project related to the inhibition of fatty acid metabolism.
- Atom Sarkar, 17, an Indian-born student at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, won sixth place for a project in molecular parasitology that investigated the role of unique protein in the life cycle of malaria parasites.
- Lisa Szubin, 16, a student at the Ramaz School in Manhattan who lives in Teaneck, N.J., won seventh place for a microbiology project that identified mutant bacteria.
- Peter Mead, 17, of Greenwich (Conn.) High School, won eighth place for a project in chemistry and computers.
- Jessica Riskin, 16, of Stuyvesant High School, won ninth place for a computer program to simulate the so- called echo effect - a method that has been proposed to measure plasma particle collisions within a magnetic mirror.
These were the other prize winners in the top 10: Michael Tai-ju Lin, 16, of La Jolla (Calif.) High School, third place; Roger C. Hayward, 17, of Falmouth (Mass.) High School, Mass.; fourth; Mark Hamburg, 17, of H. H. Dow High School in Michigan, 10th.
In addition to the $12,000 awarded Mr. Montanaro, the second- and third-place winners received $10,000 each; fourth-, fifth- and sixth-place winners received $7,500 each, and those placing seventh through 10th received $5,000 each. The remaining 30 national winners each received cash awards of $500.
The top finisher from the metropolitan area, Mr. Chang, said he had become interested in astronomy at the age of 7. ‘‘We lived in Florida,’’ he said. ‘‘It was the openness and the clarity of the sky. It was just so beautiful.’‘
When he was in the sixth grade, his father, a professor of Chinese philosphy at Pace University, bought him a telescope. For his project, Mr. Chang designed and built a telescope five feet long and a foot wide, and observed the stars from the roof and the back yard of his family’s home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.
‘‘The most difficult part was observing the stars,’’ he said. ‘‘It took a long time to get meaningful results.’’ He worked on the project for eight months, putting in 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. days during the summer.
Unlike many of the other Westinghouse winners, Mr. Chang did not go to an advanced institution for his work and he did not get help from his science teachers. At the Bronx High School of Science, according to Mr. Chang, the emphasis is on biology and mathematics, not astronomy. Interested in Molecular Biology
He said he would continue to study astronomy, but that he wanted to go to Yale University to study molecular biology. ‘‘Compared to biology, astronomy is not as hot,’’ he said.
Mr. Montanaro, who attends Oxford Hills High School in Maine and is an accomplished musician, said he was ‘‘lucky’’ to win a scholarship last summer to the Jackson Laboratory, one of the foremost institutions in the nation involved in genetic research.
There, he studied under Dr. Leslie P. Kozak, and examined the structure of the DNA molecule. He found genetic differences in the DNA taken from different mice, and judges said the work may provide clues for the study of inherent differences in the ways individuals metabolize fat. Disturbing White House Meeting
Mr. Montanaro said he was troubled by the meeting with Mr. Keyworth at the White House.
‘‘In every answer, there was the subtle implication that we were spending money on science so we can be No. 1, which I don’t care about,’’ he said.
‘‘For me, science transcends patriotic things. Looking for order and beauty in the universe transcends other things. For me education is so much more important than defense.’‘
Five previous Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize since the Westinghouse program was started in 1942.