On March 16th, the Blind Brook High School Science Research Students participated in the Regeneron Wesef fair at Somers High School. Regeneron WESEF is a local science fair affiliated with the Regeneron International Science Fair for high school students in Westchester, Putnam, and Sullivan counties of New York. Each year, this fair shows an amazing display of multi-year projects and gives many opportunities for students to present their research to scientists, business leaders, and the general public. Students prepare professional research posters detailing their projects, which have involved complex research conducted under the guidance of professional scientists in their field. These projects can range from a variety of categories including health and medicine, computer science, engineering, and astrophysics.
Students started the day with a student orientation directly followed by their judging sessions. Each student received 4-5 official judge interviews in which they prepared to give a seven minute summary of their research followed by a five minute Q&A from the judge. Later in the day, parents, siblings, and friends were invited to see all the posters and talk to the students about their projects.
Rachel Horn, a junior at Blind Brook High School presented at WESEF this past weekend with her project: Characterizing neural correlates of allocentric and egocentric navigation strategies using an EEG Virtual Reality maze test. She hoped to differentiate between these two navigational strategies with a flexible Virtual Reality technology in young adults in order to examine the role of specific regions of the brain. She was able to find that there was a significant interaction between time required to memorize a maze and complexity of the maze. With her study and future projects, she hopes to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease, a form of dementia, by focusing research on specific mechanisms in older adults that underlie methods of navigating in the brain.
After the fair, students were sent invitations to the award ceremony held on March 21st. The following Blind Brook students were given awards for their outstanding research projects:
Brook Barnett
Ava Shaw
Jinju Prince
Zaara Suhail
Alex Thompson
Bridget Zelin
Charlotte Zelin
Fiona Chen