Superintendent’s Spotlight: science research seniors

This week’s WVCSD Superintendent’s Spotlight is shining on seven seniors who will complete their three-year Science Research Program projects this spring: Reese Berman, Ashley Fitzgerald, Evan Grundfast, Abigail Kadus, Olivia Martino, Angie Ortiz, and Caroline Rourke.

The Science Research Program is one of the district’s most challenging and rigorous academic offerings. It is recognized by the NYS Board of Regents and offered in partnership with SUNY Albany, as part of the University in the High School program. Over the course of three years, high school students participate in scientific research. Students develop advanced research skills and life skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, time management and public speaking.

Reese Berman has been researching stress in secondary scholars with mentor Dr. Mark Leary, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Berman was initially interested in the effects of stress on high school students. She and Dr. Leary then narrowed the focus of her research, and she has since completed gathering data and is moving on to the next stage.

”My hypothesis was ‘students that take greater amounts of AP classes will experience more stress and lower life satisfaction outcomes,’” she explained. “At the moment, I’ve completed my research and now I’m analyzing my data.”

Berman is a Magna Cum Laude student and plans to study finance in college.

Ashley Fitzgerald has been researching the effects of the ketogenic diet and adenosine on seizure control and stopping the progression of epilepsy. Her mentor is Dr. Detlev Boison, vice chair of Research and Training, Dept. of Neurosurgery at Rutgers University.

”I am proving that the ketogenic diet, which is where you do high fat, low carbs... will increase the chemical adenosine in your brain, which will prevent the epilepsy disease from worsening in your body,” said Fitzgerald.

Ashley is a Summa Cum Laude student. Next year, she plans to major in biological sciences, minor in Spanish, and continue to do research, on the way to her ultimate goal of becoming a physician assistant.

Evan Grundfast began his project looking at diagnoses of prion disease with his mentor Dr. David Jaeger, a neurologist at Crystal Run Healthcare. Working with Dr. Jaeger, Grundfast adjusted his project to focus on a specific type of prion disease called Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

”The human version of mad cow disease, essentially,” said Grundfast. “It’s the same thing, where it causes neurodegeneration. Your brain starts to have its neurons degenerate and die.”

Grundfast received nearly 1,200 de-identified patient cases from the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center at Case Western Reserve University and is analyzing them for factors including age of onset and duration. He’s planning to study pre-med with a minor in business and continuing research in college.

Abigail Kadus began her project interested in examining the effects of sleep deprivation on adolescents in high school. She and her mentor, Dr. Arturo Arrona-Palacios, Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical, fine-tuned her project to focus on the relationship between sleep and caffeine in teens.

”I wanted [to research] sleep in teenagers, but that is a really broad research area, so my mentor suggested looking at caffeine and adolescents, which is a relevant topic around me today,” Kadus said. “We completed a survey with all the different questions, and then I met with the health teachers in Warwick and got to distribute it into their seven classes.”

Kadus is also in the analysis phase of her project. She is a Summa Cum Laude student and will be attending Rowan University next year to play lacrosse and study biology on a pre-med track.

Olivia Martino began her project planning to focus on the association between the use of isotretinoin and the risk of depression in adolescent patients with acne. Working with her mentor Dr. Rashek Kazi, dermatologist at Crystal Run Healthcare, Martino narrowed the scope of her research to the correlations between depression and acne.

”I couldn’t find enough data that supported whether isotretinoin caused depression or patients’ depression was brought on because they had acne,” she explained.

Martino is a Summa Cum Laude student. She plans to major in biology at whichever school she chooses.

Angie Ortiz has been working with her mentor Dr. Solveig Hanson, a research support specialist at Cornell University’s School of Integrative Plant Science, to assess the winter hardiness of pea plants, by seeing how they handle winter conditions such as frost, air temperatures, and wind speeds.

“Basically, all the different factors that could affect them,” said Ortiz. “I’m finding the difference between what field data is going to give me for frost resistance (or winter hardiness) and what a controlled environment is going to give me.”

Ortiz, another Summa Cum Laude student, said the Science Research experience led her to realize her love of agriculture. She plans to attain a PhD in a related field and was recently accepted into Cornell University.

Caroline Rourke has focused her project on CRISPR technology, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. CRISPR allows research scientists to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms. Her mentor is Dr. Evan Merkhofer, assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Mount Saint Mary College.

”My survey looks at how exposed people are to the technology, and then how accepting they are of its usage,” said Rourke. “Then, looking at the correlation between the two.”

Rourke is distributing her finalized survey now and will collect data through March to analyze in the spring. She is a Summa Cum Laude student and plans to major in chemical engineering in college.

The students will present their final projects during the annual Warwick Valley High School Science Research Symposium, which takes place in early June.