3 Long Island seniors named finalists in Regeneron science competition

Three high school seniors from three Nassau County public schools have been named finalists in the national Regeneron Science Talent Search competition, with projects on the neurobiology of suicide, antibodies associated with COVID-19 and how to address a computer chip shortage.

The local finalists are Natasha Kulviwat of Jericho High School, Vincent Huang of Syosset High School and Jacob Gross of Roslyn High School. They are among 40 finalists named nationwide Wednesday afternoon.

Each finalist will receive a $25,000 award and travel to Washington, D.C., for the competition March 6-13, where they will vie for more than $1.8 million in prizes. The top 10 awards will be announced at a ceremony on March 12.

The finalists were chosen based on their project's scientific rigor and their potential to become world-changing scientists and leaders. They were selected from 300 semifinalists, called scholars, announced earlier this month by Regeneron and the Society for Science. Long Island had 50 scholars honored in the competition. They each received $2,000.

The scholars were chosen from 2,162 qualified entrants, the largest pool of applicants the competition has seen since the 1960s. Each student completed an original research project and extensive application process. The nation's longest-running and most-prestigious contest of its kind, the competition is now in its 83rd year.

Kulviwat’s project was titled “The Neurobiology of Suicide: Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown as a Novel Suicide-Risk Biomarker.” 

Kulviwat, 17, has been honored by Regeneron before. In the spring, at age 16, she earned a $50,000 prize in another national competition, the 2023 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.

She said Wednesday the topic was personal. She had lost a friend to suicide when she was younger. She said she found there was not a lot of research on it and was hopeful she could make a difference.

Kulviwat did much of her research at a lab at Columbia University, where she would arrive early and leave late. She never took a vacation, she said. Her parents often stayed up late with her as she completed her project. They made sure she took breaks, too.

“I told my parents … I really want to be able to do good things for the world, hopefully," she said. "To see this all this pay off — my dad cried and he is not an emotional person.”

Kulviwat was in a Chipotle restaurant when she got the call. She put her phone down to order her bowl and a call with the area code 202 popped up. She then learned she made the finals.

"I went so crazy. I jumped up. I was screaming," she said. "The cashier was like, 'you must have really wanted that chipotle bowl.'” 

Gross, 17, researched “Investigating Synergistic Interactions Among SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Antibodies.” According to the Roslyn School District website, Gross launched an online tutoring platform called "Tutor for a Cause" during the pandemic. The district also said Gross and another student had been awarded a 2022 Mini-Research Grant from New York Institute of Technology.

The district's website said his Regeneron project focused on COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies — complex protein molecules that are used to prevent and treat COVID infections. He investigated the potentially beneficial interactions, known as synergy, that occur when multiple antibodies are combined together. Synergistic combinations often exhibit increased potency and therefore increased treatment efficacy.

Gross worked in a lab at Columbia University and credited his research teacher at Roslyn, Allyson Weseley, with helping him make the finals. Gross was tutoring a student in geometry Tuesday when he noticed he had a missed call from the Society for Science, which runs the competition.

“I continued doing geometry and then they called me back and I told my student, ‘One minute — I have to pick this up and it's kind of important,’” he said.

Weseley said Wednesday that she recognized Gross' talent when he entered the research program as a freshman. “He was such a standout in this class,” she said, noting that she thought at the time, “This kid could really be a Regeneron finalist. It was noticeable from the very first day. It’s richly deserved.”

Huang, 17, titled his project: “A smart computer program LauePt4 for recognizing and simulating Laue patterns and its applications."

According to the Syosset website, Huang's work was completed under the direction of two mentors at Stony Brook University. He said he did most of the research on his home computer.

He found that a computer application he developed called LauePt4 calculates the Laue pattern produced by a crystal, producing an exact simulation. In manufacturing computer chips, crystals are cut not along the physical surface, but along the internal lattice plane. Huang hopes that with LauePt4, the process of identifying crystal orientations can be made more efficient, which has the potential to solve current chip shortages.

He said Wednesday it has other applications, too: “It can help in the manufacturing and research of semiconductors and has other technical applications."

Huang started his path on high-level scientific research as a freshman at Syosset High School, where he has been a standout student, educators there said.

“He is interested in all sorts of scientific topics,” said teacher Mary Hendrickson. “I had the pleasure of teaching Vincent for honors bio when he was in ninth [grade], and 11th grade research as well. The joy is being able to watch him grow and progress and develop into the researcher that he is today.”

By Joie Tyrrell

joie.tyrrell@newsday.com@JoieTyrrell

Joie Tyrrell is a Long Island native and covers education for Newsday, where she has worked since 1998.