Oceanside senior in science contest final
Siemens Competition of Science finalist, Blake Smith of Oceanside H.S. (Oct. 21, 2011) Credit: Alejandra Villa
An Oceanside High School senior whose research could someday help doctors shrink lung cancer tumors advanced to the national finals of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, a prestigious contest for high schoolers, with prizes up to $100,000.
News that the senior, Blake Smith, of Oceanside, and his research partner, Vickram Gidwani, of Demarest, N.J., would compete at the national finals came Saturday night at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the site of one of the six regional contests held this month across America.
A panel of 10 professors at Carnegie Mellon judged this region's contest.
Smith, 17, was one of the nine students from the Island named Siemens regional finalists last month. Long Island students represented nearly 10 percent of the 96 regional finalists nationwide to emerge from the 1,941 entrants.
Smith and Gidwani's project, "Using novel small molecule derivatives to treat chemoresistant lung adenocarcinoma," involved altering the chemistry of existing anti-psychotic drugs in a way that helps shrink the tumors.
For Smith, the research is personal: two of his grandparents are cancer survivors -- a grandmother of ovarian cancer and a grandfather of prostate cancer. "I saw that they were able to receive treatments and . . . therapy that were incredible and were able to make them, as of now, cancer free," he said.
Smith's adviser, Oceanside High teacher Heather Hall, said this was the Oceanside program's first trip to the regionals in recent memory. The national finals are Dec. 2 to Dec. 5 in Washington, D.C., at George Washington University. There are two top awards, each bringing $100,000 in scholarships, for the winning team project and the winning individual project. Team members split their winnings.
The last Long Islander to win the top prize was Ruoyi Jiang of East Setauket and Ward Melville High School. He won in 2009, when, at 17, he did anti-cancer research using a supercomputer to find ways to kill cancer cells that have become drug-resistant.
Last year, three Long Island high school seniors won a total of $70,000 at the finals for their cancer projects.
As for Smith, his adviser said she knew when she met him as a freshman that "he was going to be a star."
"I always knew that he was destined for big things," she said.
