After nearly a year and a half of extensive research in laboratories and consultation with professionals, students taking Advanced Science Research (ASR) presented a “quasi-thesis defense of their research” to a group of faculty, staff, parents, and mentors by displaying a large-sized poster—printed in-house on the school’s large format printer—filled with details and explanations of their experiments on Monday, May 20. This research, supervised by Mr. DeCaprio ’16, included work with scientists for six intensive weeks over the summer before students’ Form VI year and the entirety of their senior year.
At this annual ASR Poster Showcase, topics had a wide variety. Nate Voss ’24 looked into the science of hereditary genes through his poster, “Exploring PROX1 as a Novel Driver of NEPC Lineage.” Tobi Jonas ’24 examined responses to cancerous symptoms in his poster on “Identifying Multiple Myeloma Therapeutic Targets by Integrating Drug Resistance and Early Treatment Response RNAseq Experiments with Genome-Wide Crispr Screens.”
Attendees of the event engaged in in-depth personal conversations with the researchers about their topics. Almost all students have also given presentations on their topics at other locations, published their work in a professional scientific journal, or written a composition of a mock NIH Grant Proposal explaining the impact of individual research on the larger scientific community.
Mr. DeCaprio “truly enjoys helping students find cutting-edge work in the sciences and watching their knowledge and interest grow over the course of two academic years.” ASR is a science-heavy course that sophomores may apply to at the end of the year. If students are interested, they can talk to Mr. DeCaprio to learn more about the class.
Outside of ASR, students taking Principles of Design Thinking Research—a senior elective program—also presented their findings at the Poster Showcase. This course concentrates on making positive and applicable community changes and examining the results. Projects included Aaron Stanger ’24’s “Streamlining Cookies at Belmont Hill”—an experiment that moved upper school milk and cookies inside the Dining Hall as opposed to the courtyard just outside—and Anthony Galvagna ’24’s new app integrating nutrition, cooking, and exercise projects, oriented around helpful technology in students’ daily life.
