Melody Hong, of General Douglas MacArthur High School, places sixth in Regeneron Science Talent Search

The Regeneron Science Talent Search ended Tuesday night with a 17-year-old from Long Island winning sixth place, but the teen and her advisers agreed that her work has only just begun.

“All of this recognition is just further motivation for me to keep going with my research, to expand it, and to hopefully make something really, really amazing out of it,” Melody Hong said late Tuesday after the awards ceremony at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Hong, of Wantagh, is the first student from General Douglas MacArthur High School in the Levittown school district to be named a finalist in the nation’s most prestigious science competition.

She won an $80,000 prize for her project, which involved creating a powerful statistical model that mapped parts of the human genome. She completed the project in a matter of months on her personal laptop, writing the code for the model herself.

The Society for Science, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that runs the Regeneron contest, said her work could “improve understanding of how genetics and the environment are related to complex diseases and aging.”

On the drive home from the airport with her parents Wednesday, Hong said she was sad to leave the other finalists, with whom she spent the past week as they presented their projects to panels of experts. The heart of the trip, she said, was the camaraderie she had with her fellow lovers of science.

“We have such a fancy venue, and then we go on all these cool field trips, and we meet very accomplished people,” she said. “But in the end, everything we do is with each other.”

Six Long Island finalists

The top award of $250,000 went to Matteo Paz, 18, from Pasadena High School in California. Paz designed machine-learning algorithms that combed through 200 billion entries of raw data and made new discoveries that include “supermassive black holes, newborn stars and supernovae,” according to the society.

Nearly 2,500 students applied to the contest this year. Out of 300 semifinalists nationwide, Long Island had 49, more than any other region in the country.

Forty finalists were named, including six Island students. The other five Island finalists were Emma Wen, of Great Neck North High School; Ishana Chadha, of Commack High School; Amy Xiao, of Garden City High School; Jolene Cao, of Smithtown High School East; and Sandeep Sawhney, of Herricks High School in New Hyde Park.

They did not make it into the top 10 but will each receive $25,000.

Hong had been joined in the nation's capital by her parents and David Friedman, her science research adviser at MacArthur.

Friedman, speaking by phone on a train back to New York, predicted Hong's achievement would create a ripple effect through the younger grades and inspire others in the district.

“It provides an example for other students in the school for what they can achieve,” he said Wednesday. “It makes it real."

Becoming a grown-up

Hong is the oldest child of three of Nakgyong and Daeyoung Hong, immigrants from South Korea. Her father said he and his wife were impressed by how the organizers treated the finalists like adults and future leaders in science.

At one point, he said he saw his daughter sitting at a table with adults he didn't know. He was so excited to see her and wanted to give her a big hug but saw the look in her eyes that said: “Don’t embarrass me,” Daeyoung Hong recalled with a laugh.

He said they ended up shaking hands.

“At that moment, I realized, ‘She's really grown up,’ ” he said.

Hong's father, a schoolteacher in New York City, said he’s thankful for the teachers who supported his daughter’s growth. He said his daughter is driven by something within herself.

“I always told Melody, ‘Do what you love,’ " he said. "And she loves this field of biostatistics.”

'Not the end of the story'

Hong's mentor, biostatistician Hélène Ruffieux from the University of Cambridge in England, said setbacks are a normal part of a career in science and the feedback that comes with rejections, either in writing a grant proposal or trying to get a paper published, can help improve researchers' work. She cited a study that suggested early-career setbacks could improve performance among those who persevere.

“If you're driven by what you are doing and you are open to receiving feedback, you will succeed,” Ruffieux said Wednesday via a video call. “These students — they are already so bright. There is no doubt that they will succeed.”

While the competition was over, Hong and Ruffieux said the teen’s project was not.

The two have discussed steps to refine Hong's research, which Ruffieux said was already of “exceptional scientific quality,” and get it published. Ruffieux said she will follow Hong’s career trajectory and would welcome opportunities to collaborate with her on future projects.

“It's not the end of the story,” Ruffieux said. “I won't let her go like this.”

By Dandan Zou

dandan.zou@newsday.com@DandanZou

Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.