Sacred Heart students named semifinalists in Regeneron competition

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Emma Amalia Carotenuto and Erica Revill, seniors at Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead, have been chosen semifinalists in the Society for Science’s 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search, one of the nation’s oldest and most renowned science competitions.  

The students’ advancement in the prestigious competition was announced on Jan. 8, making Sacred Heart the only private school on Long Island to have earned semifinal status this year, according to the school’s new release.

“It’s a big deal,” Stephen Sullivan, Sacred Heart’s research director, said. “It’s a really, really big deal, and there’s an awful lot of support (for the girls).”

Carotenuto and Revill are among 49 scholars from Long Island, and 300 nationwide, selected to move forward in the competition. More than 2,500 students from across the country applied this year, a record high for the program, according to a Regeneron news release.

Each semifinalist will receive a $2,000 award, with matching grants of $2,000 per winner to their school, so Sacred Heart Academy’s science research program will receive a total of $4,000. 

Regeneron’s top 40 finalists will be announced on Jan. 23 and will travel to Washington D.C. to showcase their projects and compete for the top prize. The overall winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 11.

Carotenuto and Revill are the school’s third and fourth students to be recognized by Regeneron, joining an elite group. Previous honorees include 2022 graduate Bella Guerra and 2024 graduate Katherine Lynch. 

The projects they submitted were part of a four-year program at Sacred Heart, where they take classes learning about research and begin focusing on conducting specific studies in their junior year.

“I’m so grateful to be a part of Sacred Heart Research Program, and to be able to work with like-minded peers, doing research together,” Carotenuto said. “It’s really awesome to see how much I’ve improved and to see how much further I can go, and to know that something I made was worth being named a semifinalist is obviously awesome.”

Carotenuto’s research, titled “The Sunset Effect: Among Nursing Home and At-Home Patients in a Latinx Community,” looks at cognitive decline in these patients that takes place in the afternoon. The study placed an emphasis on “underrepresented” groups in her research.

“I found a specific study that I used as my parent study that tested the sunset effect, or how nursing home patients experience cognitive declines in the afternoon,” Carotenuto said. “So I looked more into that realm of research, and I found that there was little to no research done on at-home patients, mainly for issues of transportation, and researchers not wanting to put in the effort to travel to homes or find a way to get them to participate in studies.

“My project was only done on strictly Latino people,” she added, “because they are also really underrepresented in research, and I wanted some originality.”

Carotenuto interviewed 15 nursing home and 15 at-home patients and found that despite their living situations, both groups experienced similar cognitive declines in the afternoon. 

“Although the nursing home patients did have lower scores overall, both groups experienced the same decline,” she said. “So I thought that was really fascinating, because that wasn’t what I was expecting really at all.”

Revill’s research project is titled “If Negative Coping Hurts, Why Doesn’t Positive Coping Help? Caregiver Burden, Coping Strategies, and State-Trait Anxiety among those Responsible for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities.” She focused on the mental health and well being of caregivers for individuals with developmental disabilities. 

Inspired by her volunteer work at Camp Anchor, a camp for special needs children and adults in Long Beach, Revill sought to explore how caregivers cope with the emotional and psychological burden of their responsibilities to also explore an untapped part of research.

“After spending a lot of my time working with the special needs community, I got to interact with their caregivers, which was what gave me the idea to look at the caregivers in my study,” she said. “When I was doing my preliminary research, there’s a lot less literature on the caregivers. Most of the focus is on the people who actually have the disabilities. And also, there was little to no research combining anxiety, caregiver burden and coping mechanisms among the caregivers.”

Revill’s study found that negative coping mechanisms, such as self-blame or substance abuse, significantly increase anxiety and caregiver burden. Positive coping strategies, such as humor, religious support and family involvement, appear to relieve some of the anxiety. Her findings provide important insights into how caregivers can be supported to reduce stress and improve their mental health.

“I feel really proud to be a semifinalist, just because I’m really passionate about my projects and what I’ve accomplished with it,” Revill said. “But I’m even more proud of having been part of Sacred Heart’s research program for four years.”

Both students expressed gratitude for the support they received throughout the research process, particularly from Sullivan and Beth Feinman, the science department chairwoman at Sacred Heart.

Looking ahead, Carotenuto said she plans to major in biochemistry with a minor in Spanish at whatever college she decides to attend, while Revill is interested in chemistry, with a focus on pharmacology and drug research.