(South
Orange, NJ—September 26, 2016) Five High Tech High School students, along with
Dr. Dmitri Lavlinski, attended a poster session at Seton Hall University,
organized by the North Jersey Section of the American Chemical Society,
announced Dr. Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.
These students, members of the American Chemical Society’s Project SEED summer research program,
each received $2,500, while gaining valuable hands-on experience on the frontlines
in research labs.
High Tech High School junior Anna Rezk of Bayonne, working
under Dr. Woo Lee at Stevens Institute of Technology, had produced “Cell
Adhesion Mediated Drug Resistance of Patient Multiple Myeloma Cells Cultured Ex
Vivo,” which earned her First Place at the poster session. Over the summer, Rezk
practiced her presentation in two underclassmen classes, receiving very
welcomed responses.
Also
earning First Place for their posters, Tanushri Shah and Jeel Shah, both juniors
from North Bergen, studied “The Effect of Cellular Radiation on the Behavior of
Apis mellifera,” which the pair based
on observations of High Tech’s own beehives. They found that this type of radiation results
in disruption of the communication between bees, causing no honey production, a
lack of self-defense, and adverse effects on reproduction.
Another
Project SEED junior, Shelina Chotrani of Secaucus, worked with research mentor Dr.
Christian Traba at St. Peters University.
Chotrani’s poster reflected her experiments on “The Effect of Low-power
Argon Plasma Exposure on Staphylococcus
aureus Biofilms.” Meanwhile, High Tech High School senior and Guttenberg
resident Hady Chahine, under the tutelage of Dr. Wendy Wang, performed research
at Stevens Institute of Technology on “Regeneration of Skin Cells Using
Biomedic Fibers.” Both Chotrani and
Chahine earned Third Place at the poster session.
The American Chemical Society’s Project
SEED summer research program allows those students from economically
disadvantaged neighborhoods to experience the intriguing, highly dedicated
routines of a chemist. Students entering
their junior or senior year in high school work alongside scientist-mentors on special
research projects in industrial, academic, and federal laboratories, where the
students can discover chemistry firsthand as a career path as their graduation
approaches.
