A Great Neck student has been named champion of this year’s Long Island Brain Bee.

Isabella Fong, of Great Neck South High School, won first place in the seventh annual neuroscience competition, held earlier this month at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in Hempstead. Seventy students from more than 30 local schools competed, according to Hofstra officials.

Fong is now eligible to compete in the National Brain Bee at Rutgers University on May 3-4.

“I studied consistently for about a month and made sure to study as much as I could every single day,” said Fong, who placed third last year. “Participating in last year’s competition also helped me know what to expect and motivated me to work hard.”

The Brain Bee included a multiple-choice exam based on “Brain Facts,” a book published by the Society for Neuroscience, as well as a laboratory practical where participants “analyzed real human brain and neurological specimens to identify anatomical structures and their functions,” according to Hofstra.

Second and third place went to Vincent Foschino, of Island Trees High School in Levittown, and Soha Jhaveri, of Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School, respectively.

“We’re hoping that participating students discover new things about the brain, learn lots of brain facts, get exposed to a variety of brain anatomy and specific parts of the brain, and hopefully spark an interest for a career in the brain sciences or medical field,” organizer Vanessa Reddin said in a statement.

MASTIC BEACH

William Floyd High School’s Barbering Academy has launched a new video series, titled “Undefined,” in which staff members receive free haircuts while being interviewed. Among those to appear so far are assistant principal Brian Kennedy, technology teacher Paul Vassallo and culinary arts teacher Rich Daly.

Academy instructor Cara Cliffe is the host and barber for the show, which is available on the academy’s Instagram page, @wfloyd_barbering133.

“Our hope is to give students an insight into the lives of many different people they encounter daily and let them know how different we all are, but how we all are here now in the same space,” assistant principal Robert Felicetta said in a statement.

PATCHOGUE/
LYNBROOK

Allison Wong, of Lynbrook South Middle School, and Baylee Stanton, of Saxton Middle School in Patchogue, tied for first place in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science’s Challenge at Stony Brook University. The competition invited students to choose a female scientist, conduct an experiment related to her work and create a video of what they learned, according to university officials.

Wong, for example, chose late NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, and reverse engineered the trajectory and velocity of a catapult launch. Wong and Stanton split $1,750 in prize money.

Third place went to Julia D’Amico of Mineola Middle School and Valerie D’Amico of Jackson Avenue Elementary School in Mineola. They won $500.

ISLANDWIDE

Five students were named regional delegates at this year’s Long Island Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and are invited to attend the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in Virginia on April 22-26. To participate, students submitted research papers and the best were selected for presentation, according to symposium officials.

This year’s regional delegates and their high schools: Natalie Osorio, H. Frank Carey in Franklin Square; Sean Skinner, Ward Melville in East Setauket; Emma Su, Herricks; Emma Wen, Great Neck North; and Henry Zhang, Jericho.

Long Island’s alternate delegates and their high schools: Neel Khurana, Jericho; and Eunice Park, Paul D. Schreiber in Port Washington.

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.