An Intel Science Talent Finalist at Yorktown High

Yorktown High School senior Andrew Amini has been named a finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search competition.

He was one of three students recognized earlier in the month as a semi-finalist and has now moved on in the competition to vie for more than $1 million in awards in the Intel competition’s 75th anniversary event.

Amini is one of 40 nationwide and three in Westchester County to receive this distinction.

The Intel competition is one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious pre-college science and math competition which is intended to encourage students to tackle challenging scientific questions and create technologies and solutions that will impact people’s lives.

“I am thrilled and eager to move on to the next stage in this research competition,” Amini said Wednesday in a statement from the school. The high school senior will attend Cornell University this fall and plans to study biological sciences. His goal, he says, is to become a physician and continue his science research.

Amini’s research topic is ““Automatic Seizure Onset and Severity Prediction with a Single, Strategically-placed, Bipolar Electroencephalogram” and was a project he has worked on for three years.

He says he became interested in the topic because of an aunt who had seizures and he hoped to find a way to better predict when these would happen.

The Yorktown Science Research department has 19 seniors this year all doing graduate level research. This year there were three semi-finalists. In 2004, a semi- finalist moved on to the finalist stage, said teacher Michael Blueglass, who oversees the Yorktown Science Research program with colleagues Dominic Guazzo and Rachel Koenigstein.

“We are very excited and so proud of Andrew,” Blueglass said. “While we have had many students recognized in Intel competitions, having a finalist is a big honor. We are very proud of all our students and the many competitions where they excel is a tribute to their dedication and hard work.”

The finalists are invited to Washington, DC in March to undergo final judging, display their work to the public, meet with notable scientists, and compete for $1,012,500 in awards, including the three top awards of $150,000 each.

PHOTO/Yorktown school district