Central District boasts five Intel semifinalists

One Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District senior examined teachers’ biases toward students with disabilities, mental and physical, and found in a survey of 5,000 educators across the country that teachers tended to grade students with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and diabetes lower than students with a “visible disability,” such as cerebral palsy.

Another student did what many scientists thought impossible –– he trained mice to think about their surroundings before responding to auditory signals.

A third student spent two summers meticulously analyzing reams of data to determine whether soybeans grown under drought conditions with the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide expected in 2050 would yield more or less food.

And two students undertook studies to help cure cancer.

All put hundreds of hours into their projects through the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District’s Authentic Science Research Program, and those efforts were rewarded last Wednesday when the five were named semifinalists in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search, which annually awards $1.25 million in scholarships to the top science and mathematics students from across the nation. This year, more than 1,800 students entered the competition, and 300 of their projects –– including the five from Bellmore-Merrick –– were selected as semifinalists.

The Central High School District’s crop of semifinalists, each of whom receives a $1,000 scholarship, included: Asia Brown of Calhoun High School; Brett Gossett, Ross Iscowitz and Ross Shulman, all of Kennedy High School; and Bilal Siddiqui of Mepham High School. Students will learn at the end of January whether they are finalists in the competition, which would put them in the running for tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships. Below are profiles of each of Bellmore-Merrick’s semifinalists.

Asia Brown

Calhoun High School senior