Garden City High School students earn top honors at Long Island Science and Engineering Fair
On March 12, science research juniors Taylor Maguire and Trisha Samanpure from Garden City High School competed in the Round 2 finals of the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair at Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury. From an initial pool of 407 projects representing 457 students across Nassau and Suffolk counties, their work was selected among the top projects advancing to the final round.
Maguire’s project, “Dragon Gel: Exploring the Capabilities of a Dragon Fruit-Infused Wound Healing Hydrogel in the Mitigation of Oxidative Stress,” earned the second-place grand award in biology from a field of 31 Round 2 projects. Samanpure’s project, “Transtibial Prosthetic Socket Engineering: A Closed-Loop Workflow Combining 3D Limb Reconstruction, Stereolithographic Fabrication, Mechanical Load Characterization, and Finite Element Analysis,” received a special award from Yale Science and Engineering Association recognizing the most outstanding 11th grade project in STEM. She also received an honorable mention at the fair.
While the finalists competed in the LISEF finals, the LISEF Junior Varsity division took place. Three GCHS sophomores — Letao Tao, Marcus Lam and Reese Smith — presented their research to a panel of science teachers from local schools. Tao’s project used machine learning and artificial intelligence to track fruit fly sleep and wake cycles, Lam studied methods to reduce allergens in shellfish, and Smith investigated the effects of zero gravity on plant growth.
“The LISEF fairs provided a wonderful opportunity for our students to showcase the depth and creativity of their research,” said Dr. Steven Gordon, science research teacher at Garden City High School. “I’m incredibly proud of their hard work and the outstanding accomplishments they’ve achieved.”