Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts seniors Will Duke and Nick Nehas were named 2016 Siemens Competition in Mathematics, Science and Technology Semifinalists and Region Finalists this week.
The Siemens Competition is the nation’s premier competition in math, science and technology for high school students. Every year, students submit innovative individual and team research projects to regional and national levels of competition as they vie for college scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $100,000.
This year more than 1,600 projects were submitted and 498 students were selected as semifinalists. Only three students in Arkansas, including Duke and Nehas, were recognized as semifinalists.
This is the first time an ASMSA student has been recognized as a regional finalist. A select group of semifinalists are chosen to advance to one of six regional competitions to be held in November. This year there were 96 regional finalists named.
Duke and Nehas will compete in Region 2 at the University of Texas at Austin in November. States in Region 2 include Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and Oklahoma. They are guaranteed at least a $1,000 college scholarship for being named a regional finalist.
Winners of the regional contests earn the opportunity to compete in the National Finals held at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in Decmeber where $500,000 in scholarships will be awarded, including two top prizes of $100,000.
It is the second year in a row that an ASMSA student has been recognized as a Siemens Competition Semifinalist. Taryn Imamura of Conway, a 2016 graduate, was recognized as a semifinalist last year.
Duke of Pine Bluff and Nehas of North Little Rock submitted a team project to this year’s competition. Their project focused on the Coral Gardens reef in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Belize. They conducted research on the health of the reef during an ASMSA Global Learning Program trip this summer to the Tropical Marine Research and Education Center in San Pedro, Belize.
During a snorkeling trip to the Coral Gardens, Duke and Nahas recorded footage of the reefs. Coral Gardens has surprisingly healthy coral, Duke said. It is located next to two marine protected areas but is not protected itself.
“It’s interesting though because it has some of the best coral in the Caribbean,” Duke said.
Duke and Nahas used the video footage of the Coral Gardens reef to compare the data to previous studies as well as to two other reefs in general. The data allows them to study the reefs in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico in a broader sense.
Duke and Nehas both said they were surprised and excited about garnering such high recognition for their project. Both received a phone call on Sunday to inform them they had been selected regional finalists and semifinalists.
Nehas didn’t answer the call initially thinking it was a junk call from a number he didn’t recognize. “They left me a voicemail, but didn’t tell me I was a semifinalist. I didn’t get an answer when I called back. Then I got an email from (Duke) telling me we were semifinalists. I was sitting there with my mom, and she got up and whooped and hollered,” Nehas said.
Duke did answer his phone although he didn’t recognize the number. “I get a lot of calls that are scams,” he said. Once he hung up, he just let it soak in and then told his parents. “It wasn’t anything too extravagant. They were pretty happy, congratulating me.”
“It was a huge relief,” Duke added, saying he wasn’t sure how far the team would make it in the competition.
Nehas said during their trip they recognized their study of the coral reefs would be important information for those who work with and in the reefs in Belize but not that it would garner recognition beyond that. Duke said they now realize that their work can be applied to many other reefs around the world.
“I think that’s pretty significant,” he said.
Nahas and Duke decided in the months before the trip that they would produce a joint Fundamentals in Research Methods project from the trip. Each ASMSA senior must complete a FIRM project as part of their graduation requirements.
The students received a Murphy USA Summer Research Fellowship from the ASMSA Foundation to go toward the trip. This was the first summer that the fellowship awards were available. The requirements for the fellowship required the students must enter their project in one national competition such as the Siemens Competition.
This was the first research-related trip in ASMSA’s Global Learning Program. Previous trips were language and humanities based. Dr. Lindsey Waddell, a chemistry and geoscience instructor at ASMSA, coordinated the group’s trip to Belize in cooperation with a group of undergraduate students from Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.
The opportunity for the ASMSA students to participate when Waddell corresponded with Dr. James Engman, a biology professor at Henderson. A few spots on his undergraduate trip to study at the marine center remained open. The trip also included students from KIPP Delta School, Des Arc High School and Maumelle High School.
The students studied several days at the marine center learning about the coral reefs that populate the Caribbean Sea off Belize’s coast. They followed that with several days of snorkeling to study the reefs.
“We went out to all of the major sites around San Pedro,” Waddell said. “There are a lot of marine protected areas. There is an incredible concentration of coral in one place. A lot of the coral suffered disease a couple of decades ago.”
Waddell said Duke and Nehas had a passion to for marine biology that attracted them to the opportunity to study in Belize.
“That passion has continued to carry them through the countless hours of analyzing video footage and writing in the months since their return. While we were in Belize, I was very impressed at how naturally they took to snorkeling under what were sometimes less-than-ideal conditions and at how quickly their field identification skills solidified,” she said.
Wadell said when Duke and Nehas selected Coral Gardens for the focus of their project there was every expectation that there would be plenty of previously published studies to which they could compare their findings.
“They quickly discovered that this was not the case, which makes their study important as a baseline for future comparison,” she said, particularly because Coral Gardens is the home of a large sample of staghorn coral nonexistent or rare in other reefs. “The experience might be compared to something like running with a herd of white rhinoceros. If the staghorn coral are to have the best chance of surviving to be seen by future generations, monitoring is very important as are management decisions.”
Waddell hoped the trip would influence some of the students to consider a career in marine science. Nahas said he has long thought about becoming a marine biologist and the trip confirmed that. Duke said he is also considering some form of marine science for a major in college. Considering he had never been snorkeling before this trip, the change in career plans was triggered by this experience.
“I had been around fish and water my entire life, but I never thought about it as a career. I went on this trip and now I want to do marine science. This trip kind of changed my plans,” Duke said.
For Nahas, this trip provided him his first opportunity to travel outside of the country. Both students said having the opportunity to study abroad is special. Besides viewing the coral reefs, the trip also gave them the opportunity to experience a new culture.
“It was an awesome cultural experience. You’re learning about what their daily lives entail,” Nahas said.
The Siemens Competition prize, launched by the Siemens Foundation in 1999, was established to increase access to higher education for students who are gifted in STEM and is based on the culture of innovation, research and educational support that is the hallmark of Siemens. The competition seeks to recognize and build a strong pipeline for the nation’s most promising scientists, engineers and mathematicians.