For such a tiny high school, Blind Brook can hold its own when it comes to scientific research. Two seniors earned themselves recognition in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search for their projects. Jack Broitman and Stanley Vuong are two of 300 semifinalists selected from a pool of nearly 1,800 entrants from across the country and even overseas for the science research competition for high school seniors. Blind Brook has often boasted Intel semifinalists before, but two is very much a coup for the district.
“It’s an incredibly competitive process,” said Blind Brook High School Principal Pat Lambert. “We’ve got really talented and motivated students, but that’s no guarantee. We’re really delighted.” The 2015 Intel Semifinalists were announced at noon on Wednesday. Lambert called the two down to her office when she got the good news. “The first thing they wanted to do was tell Dr. Sugantino,” Lambert said.
Dr. Michelle Sugantino is the Blind Brook High School science teacher who oversees the Honors Science Research program. “Ultimately this is a labor of love on the part of Dr. Sugantino,” the principal said. “It’s thrilling to know that we’ve got these valuable resources here to mentor kids and get them to this point.”
Students start in the program as freshmen and then as sophomores find an outside mentor to help guide them through their independent project. Broitman paired up with Dr. Ruth Bryan at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. The radiology professor’s unexplored idea to determine the effectiveness of two different ways to deliver alpha radiation to affected cells appealed to the Blind Brook student. When Broitman was about nine years old, his mother participated in an experimental immune treatment to help her twin sister who had late-stage multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. His aunt ended up in remission and Broitman became motivated to really study science and, in particular, immunology.
Through Broitman’s research, “Comparing the Effects of an External Alpha Particle Beam with Antibody Delivered Alpha Radiation on the Survival and Metabolic Activity of Cryptococcus neoformans,” he discovered one way to deliver the alpha radiation to be superior. “We found that the antibody-delivered alpha particles had a higher killing rate than the externally delivered ones,” he explained.
“I think that it’s really important in the scope of immunotherapy,” the 17-year-old added, as this could impact how radiation treatment for cancer and infectious diseases is used. The fact that Broitman had sizable results at the end of his research-as did Vuong-is one reason his work likely stood out to the judges, Sugantino said. “The topics are very relative to what’s going on in science today and they actually had significant results,” she explained. Research is research and sometimes at the end of it there is nothing substantial to show, the science teacher said.
