Street Wins Grand Prize at Westchester Science Fair

Hastings High School students Ian Cloutier, Joshua Kolbert, Matthew Ocana and Hannah Street participated in the Westchester Science and Engineering Fair March 10.

Hannah won the grand prize for her research and has been chosen to represent Hastings and Westchester County at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Matt won the Stockholm Junior Water Prize for his work at Sugar Pond. He will be submitting his research to the New York State level of that competition.

It is the first time Hastings has ever had a grand prize winner at this competition! Only nine individuals and four teams were chosen for this honor out of the over 300 students who competed.

Hannah will be joining the other students from Westchester with an all expense paid trip to the competition from May 13-18 in Pittsburgh, PA.  Hannah is the first student from Hastings to achieve this honor. She will be going to the Intel competition, "the world's largest international pre-college science competition," in May to compete against over 1,500 students from 65 countries. The students compete for over $4 million worth of prize money. 

Hannah did her research at Mount Sinai Medical Center with mentor Dr. Karen Briley-Saebo last summer on using MRI technology to allow for early diagnosis of age related macular degeneration. The title of her project is: "Targeted MDA2 Iron Oxide Particles for In Vivo MnCl2 Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Detection of Oxidative Epitopes in the Retina."

Hannah will be joining the other students from Westchester with an all expense paid trip to the competition. Progeneron, a pharmaceutical company in Westchester, sponsors the students and pays for their airfare and hotel stay.