Garden Ciy High School teams take top 2 spots in stock-picking contest

Two Garden City High School teams have shown they have a knack for picking stocks.

The school took first and second place out of 353 teams this winter in the Nassau County high school division of the SIFMA Foundation's Stock Market Game, an online simulation that engages students in grades 4-12 in the world of economics, investing and personal finance.

This is the second straight year Garden City teams have placed first and second in the county, school officials said.

The first-place team also was second statewide out of about 2,600 high school teams.

"It doesn't matter if they lose or gain money, as long as they learn financial lessons they can carry through the rest of life," said Gene Rochler, a business teacher and Stock Market Game adviser at Garden City.

Participating teams are given $100,000 of fictitious capital and are asked to invest in three companies that are at least $5 a share through the game website from Oct. 6 to Dec. 12, Rochler said. Students then research companies, track trends, and calculate gains and losses.

The first-place team — Joseph Gillespie, Anthony DeAngelo, Eric Eulau and William Eigl — finished with a total of $121,698.54 by investing in companies such as Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company.

The second-place team — Georgij Litvinov, Patrick Bodovitz and Conor Maloney — finished with $116,537.43. Their top investment was Take 2 Entertainment, the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, Rochler said.

SYOSSET: STYLISH DESIGNS

South Grove Elementary School students Erika Ahn and Kate Lin were among four winners nationwide in Katie Woo's Super Stylish Contest coordinated by Capstone, a publisher of children's books. Katie Woo is a character in children's books by author Fran Manushkin and artist Tammie Lyon.

The contest invited fans in kindergarten to third grade to create a one-of-a-kind outfit for the character, who celebrates her fifth anniversary this year. The winning designs will be featured in two Katie Woo titles.

Ahn's design was a multitiered ruffle skirt in a rainbow of colors, while Lin's outfit was a "spectacularly bold" floral-print kimono, Capstone said.

NASSAU COUNTY: 'PARTNERS FOR THE FUTURE'

Eight Nassau County students are among 13 across Long Island conducting real medical research this school year through the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's 2014-15 "Partners for the Future" program.

The students are Michael Callahan of Farmingdale High School, Henry Cheung of Seaford High School, Melissa Cipolla of Friends Academy in Locust Valley, Harshil Garg of Bethpage High School, Annet Kuruvilla of East Meadow High School, Michelle Shen of Syosset High School, Rachel Wesley of Oyster Bay High School, and Seungmin Ti of The Wheatley School in Old Westbury.

High school seniors are nominated for the program by their school science chair, with semifinalists interviewed by lab scientists.

Winners spend at least 10 hours a week from September through March performing original research alongside a scientist mentor and then give oral presentations at the conclusion of the program.

ISLANDWIDE: 'RECYCLE RUSH'

More than 800 Long Island students gathered at Stony Brook University last month for a kickoff event to learn the theme of the 2015 Long Island Regional FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, scheduled March 26 to 28 at Hofstra University. This year's theme will be "Recycle Rush."

Three-team alliances will battle for points by stacking totes on platforms, capping stacks with recycling containers, and properly disposing of pool noodles that will represent litter. Teams also received kits containing a mix of automation components and will have six weeks to build their robots.

The competition is sponsored by the School-Business Partnerships of Long Island.