Hen Hud Student Researcher Jazz Munitz Reaches Siemens Semifinals

Hendrick Hudson High School Senior Jazz Munitz has been named a semi-finalist for the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, & Technology. He is the first student from Hen Hud to place at this extremely prestigious competition.

Dr. Christine Rogers, Hendrick Hudson’s Science Research Program Director, noted that although Jazz did not move up to the regional finals, his semi-finalist status is an enviable achievement: “This competition is hard for many reasons. First, it is exclusively targeted to projects in math, physics, chemistry, engineering and biology (molecular biology, genetics, botany or biochemistry); second, its deadline is very early in the school year, at the end of September, and most students are still finishing their papers at this point, working on data collected during the summer; and third, the level of the projects is very high.”

The title of Jazz’s paper is “The Development and In Vitro Analysis of Two Low-Cost Organic Nanoparticles for the Treatment and Imaging of Solid Cancerous Masses through Microfluidics Synthesis Techniques.” He worked for three years on the development of a microscopic nanoparticle with the ability to target specific cancer cells and destroy them. He worked with a number of properties of cancer cells to engineer a particle able to recognize only cancer cells and deliver to the inside of the cells a molecule triggering their death.

This allows a lower concentration of chemotherapeutic drugs and minimizes the side effects associated with these types of medications.

Jazz also added a molecule to the nanoparticles to make them visible with an MRI. He both initiated the design of the nanoparticles and manufactured them. He then characterized them to verify that the nanoparticles were as designed and tested their activity in cancer cells kept in culture. Next year, after he turns 18, Jazz will continue working with Dr. Willem Mulder and his team at the Mount Sinai Nanomedicine Program to test the nanoparticles on animals with cancerous tumors.

In 1998, the famous Westinghouse competition split into two competitions -- the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, & Technology and the Intel Science Talent Search. Both competitions are paper-based for the selection of semi-finalists and finalists, and students will have worked a minimum of three years to completely design, implement and collect results for their research papers. Dr. Rogers said that this year there were about 1,600 entries for about 400 semi-finalists nationwide. Sixty-seven were from N.Y. State, and twelve were from Westchester. For more information on the competition, click HERE.

Jazz will also be entering the INTEL STS competition and various other local competitions in the spring, which may qualify him for additional state and national competitions, Dr. Rogers noted. The local competitions are presentation- and poster-based.