By Zach Patberg
Michelle Iocolano and Sylviane Boddy, both 17, were two of 13 students from Queens and 31 citywide to win for their research projects. The nationwide honor, announced at a ceremony last week, came as unexpected to both.”I was completely shocked,” Iocolano, of Flushing, said. “It still hasn't sunk in yet.”In her study, Iocolano looked at how certain proteins binding to brain cell membranes affected degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.What she found were stronger and weaker binding capabilities among certain proteins. Since a weak connection is one sign of having such a disease, Iocolano said pinpointing which ones do could allow doctors to detect the illnesses earlier and help find ways to make those binds stronger.For her part, Boddy, of Forest Hills, looked at the regions of the brain that trigger facial expressions and emotions in autistic patients.By comparing brain scans, she found that such expressions and emotions came from different parts of the brain depending on whether the individual was autistic or not. In doing so, Boddy said she hopes that in the future researchers can treat the disease more efficiently by focusing on only those specific regions rather than the entire span of the brain.Both students spent most of their summer and sacrificed vacations laboring over their research. Boddy made the three-hour commute twice a week to a laboratory at Yale University in New Haven. From the beginning of July to the beginning of school in the fall, Iocolano traveled every weekday to her lab at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.”It was like a job,” she said.But the two agree it was well worth the effort.”It was an amazing experience just working as a high school student in an actual lab,” said Boddy, adding that her research turned her on to the field of neuroscience, which she expects to study next year at Columbia University.Iocolano said she had trouble finding a topic to research until she visited her mentor, Dr. Suzanne Scaralata, at Stony Brook. Once she was introduced to the field of biochemistry, she said, she was hooked.”At first it was all very distant to me,” she said. “But once I came to the lab and had hands-on experience, I just kind of fell in love with it.”Iocolano plans to continue a focus in biochemistry at either Drew University or Colgate University.Finalists for the Intel contest are to be announced Jan. 25. Until then, “I'll just sit and wait and hope they pick me,” Iocolano said.Nicole Elizabeth Lam, 17, of Sunnyside, who is a student at Bronx High School of Science, captured a spot on the semifinalist list for her research into the microscopic brains of the fruit fly.Yi Cui, 18, a Bronx Science student from Floral Park, was recognized for work in skimming.Four students from Townsend Harris High School in Flushing took honors as Intel semi-finalists for their scientific projects.Anjie Zheng, 17, for studies on the Oriental Weatherfish; Sangsoo Kim, 17, of Fresh Meadows, for research on the regulation of human cancer cells; Maryam Ibrahim Sultan, 17, of Woodside, for research on the genetics of autism; and Christie Ching-Lin Sze, 16, of Bayside, who studied the growth of cell.Five students from Queens enrolled at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan were selected as well. The semi-finalists from the school were Xiaotian Chen, 18, of Jamaica Estates; Byron Joseph Cheung, 17, of Fresh Meadows; Christine Flora Lai, 17, of Bayside; Longyin Li, 17 of Rego Park; and Steve Teng, 17, of Rego Park.Representatives from Stuyvesant did not return calls for additional information.Reach reporter Zach Patberg at news@timesledger.com or at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
