Two North Shore Hebrew Academy High School (NSHA) students, Jason Kurlander and Dylan Makani, are among the 491 semifinalists in the prestigious 2017 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology—the nation’s premier science-research competition for high schoolers, which encourages intensive individual or team research projects, fosters students’ appreciation for the value of scientific study and helps inform their consideration for careers in these disciplines.
Kurlander and Makani are the only two students from a Long Island Yeshiva and two of just four Yeshiva students in the entire tristate area to become semifinalists.
Of his project, Characterizing in Situ mTG Crosslinked Gelatin Hydrogels with Encapsulated Dental Pulp Stem Cells for Cell Delivery in Applications of Regenerative Medicine, Kurlander, a senior at NSHA, said “Having spent numerous hours on this important research, I am excited to be a semi-finalist but am even more excited about the possibility that my research will help people in the future.”
Makani, a sophomore, shared a similar sentiment about his project, Mitigation of TiO2 Stress and Characterization of a Putative Brassinosteroid Insensitive-1 Gene in Lemna Minor: “It was exciting to perform novel research on such an interesting topic, and it means a lot to be contributing to science in such a meaningful way.”
