New Livingston School Board Member Fights Cancer, Plays Piano, And Can't Vote

LIVINGSTON, NJ — Maybe it's not every teenager's fantasy to be on their local Board of Education, but why not have a say in the goings-on that affect you, even if you're not old enough to vote?

Now that the state of New Jersey passed a law this year mandating that school boards have a student representative from grades 9-12, the Livingston Board of Education swore in Jeffrey Xu, 17, at their board meeting this past Tuesday.

Xu will be a senior at LHS in the fall. This summer, he's interning at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City to study lung cancer pathogenesis.

Last summer, he performed analytical chemistry research at NJIT, for which he had a paper published in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, the district noted.

"He is deeply passionate about the natural sciences and is captain of the high school’s Science Olympiad and Science Bowl teams," the district said. "In addition, he serves as founder/president of LHS' chapter of the International Youth Neuroscience Association."

Xu also has been playing classical piano for 11 years.

Some of his other hobbies include reading/writing poetry and playing word games/puzzles, the district noted. He says that he enjoys exploring both the sciences and the humanities.

Find out about the Livingston Board of Education and future meetings here.