Smithtown HS East Senior Named Regeneron Scholar

ST. JAMES, NY — Holy Mary Zaher, a senior at Smithtown High School East, is one of 300 students across the United States named a scholar in this year's Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Smithtown School District announced.

Zaher's research project was “The Correlation Between Peroxisome Levels and Short-Term Memory Loss in a PINK1-/- Rat Model of Parkinson's Disease."

She studied the cellular level in those who have the disease. To examine the organelle’s levels, a brain region of interest afflicted by Parkinson’s disease needed to be chosen. Rat models of Parkinson’s disease were used to investigate memory deficits by exploiting rats’ natural tendency to explore.

Zaher counted more than 45,000 points delineating pyramidal neurons in the selected brain regions. No difference between the intensity of the organelle’s presence and Parkinson’s disease was found. However, this leads to the next step of investigating if the organelle is functioning to its full capacity.

Maria Zeitlin, the science research coordinator at Smithtown High School East, said Zaher's research was especially impressive because she was the one who created it.

"Ms. Zaher's work investigating Parkinson's disease utilized rat brain tissue to probe the presence of damage due to reactive oxygen species on brain cells," Zeitlin said via news release. "Often students are given projects to work on. What makes this extra special is that it was a project she
created. It was a very clever investigation performed after pondering what was seemingly a simple question in theory, but complicated for a high school student to actually execute, and she did so at such an advanced level. She is well-deserving of this honor and I am so proud of her! Her work involved countless hours including weekends reading research journals and executing the experiment. She exhibited incredible resilience as her data was still coming in right up until days before the STS deadline."