Two Ardsley High School Students Win Regional Science Competition

On Saturday, the Ardsley High School Science Research program participated in the Westchester Science and Engineering Fair (WESEF). This event showcased research from 550 students from 35 school districts from Westchester and Putnam.

Ardsley was honored with two grand prize winners: Vivek Hariharan and Kruti Sutaria. These awards are granted to the top 12 overall individual scoring projects and the top three team projects. The award includes an all-expenses paid trip to compete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, AZ.

Vivek Hariharan will travel to Intel ISEF to present his research “Exploring the Role of ω-Amidase as a Repair Enzyme for Hydroxyglutaramate and Hydroxysuccinamate”. Kruti Sutaria and her partner from Yorktown High School, Anisha Duvvi, will also present their research “The Molecular Basis of the Transdifferentiation of Embryonic Chick Limb Chondrogenic Precursors into a Beige Fate”. Both students conducted their research at New York Medical College. Vivek and Kruti will be two of only 18 students representing our region and competing with 1,600 students from all around the world in what is considered to be the “Olympics of Science Fairs”.

Other students from the Ardsley Science Research program also presented their work and received many awards for outstanding research: Jad Chaar: 2nd Place (Computer Science), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Award; Christopher Florez: 3rd Place (Behavior Science); Zachary Gold: 3rd Place (Health and Medicine); Rachel Goldman: American Psychological Association Award; Vivek Hariharan: Grand Prize Winner, 1st Place (Biochemistry);Philip Lee: 4th Place (Engineering)

Lakshmi Mahajan: ASU Watson Sustainability Solutions Initiative Award and Stockholm Junior Water Prize (Environmental Science); Anirudh Murthy: 3rd Place (Cell and Molecular Biology); Ronin Sharma: 3rd Place (Computational Biology and Bioinformatics); Jainil Sutaria: ASM Materials Education Foundation Award (Engineering); and Kruti Sutaria: Grand Prize Winner - TEAM, 1st Place (Cell and Molecular Biology)

About WESEF: WESEF, sponsored in part by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Acorda Therapeutics and Entergy, is a major local science fair for multi-year projects by the best high school science research students in Westchester and Putnam counties. At the event, students deliver formal presentations of their scientific accomplishments in a poster forum to professional researchers in the local area and compete to attend the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair, which is the larger, and more global of the two Intel sponsored events. For more information, visit www.wesef.org