Seven South High School students have been named 2024 Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholars. Brandon Kim, Luke Huang, Brian Liu, Helen Tang, Maggie Wu, Alexander Xu, and Tiffany Zhang are among 300 high school seniors to achieve this honor in one of the nation’s most prestigious science competitions.

“These seven Scholars and their faculty advisors have brought tremendous pride to Great Neck and their families,” praised Superintendent Kenneth R. Bossert. “The hard work, dedication, creativity and time it takes to have work considered among the best in the nation is truly a reflection of the effort given to the task. I am certain these aspiring researchers will continue to make significant contributions in their selected areas of interest.”

This year, South High School has the largest number of Scholars of any school in the region. The South High science research program is led by teachers/advisors Nicole Spinelli and James Truglio.

Regeneron STS Scholars and their project titles are:

• Luke Huang, “Multiscale Analysis of the Hubble Tension in an Evaluation of the LAMBDACDM Model”
• Brandon Kim, “Deciphering Receptor-Ligand Connectomes in Models of Lung Adenocarcinoma”
• Brian Liu, “Evaluating the Applied Effectiveness of ECG Compression Algorithms for Myocardial Infarction Detection”
• Helen Tang, “Impact of Unmet Social Needs on Acute and Long-Term Outcomes in COVID-19 Patients”
• Maggie Wu, “Effects of Dissolved Oxygen Levels on the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Denitrification Performance of Woodchip Bioreactors Treating Onsite Wastewater”
• Alexander Xu, “CARe-BERT: BERT-Powered Graph Augmentation for Context-Aware Radiology Report Retrieval”
• Tiffany Zhang, “Resolving the Constraints Imposed by Chiral Effective Field Theory and Perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics on the Neutron Star Equation of State”

Great Neck’s seven Scholars are among 300 semifinalists nationwide, selected from an applicant pool of 2,162 entrants. Each Scholar will receive $2,000, with a matching amount for their school.

Maya Ajmera, President and CEO of Society for Science and Executive Publisher of Science News, said this year’s competition had a record-breaking number of applications. “I am truly impressed by the quality of the projects and the ingenuity that each student brings to the competition. Their diligence, passion, and perseverance should be celebrated.”

The Regeneron competition is the former Westinghouse and then the Intel Science Talent Search. The Talent Search, begun in 1942, is the nation’s oldest, and often considered its most prestigious, science and mathematics competition for high school seniors.

It is owned and produced by Society for Science. On Jan. 24, 40 of the top 300 Scholars will be announced as Finalists and will advance in the national competition.