Greenport High School student Joe McInnis, 15, has won second place and a $250 award in Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual essay contest.
The contest is open to high school students in Nassau and Suffolk counties and this year students were asked to write an essay based on one of ten iconic images provided by Brookhaven Laboratory. Mary Kathryn Baker, Greenport’s biology teacher and advisor to the brand new science club, encouraged her students to enter.
Aiden Crowley, an eighth grader, also participated and received a certificate.
Joe, who is in ninth grade, chose to write about positron emission tomography (PET) scanners and his vision for the future of PET. He was also required to use examples of events and discoveries associated with the image and make a case for how the work has affected him, Long Island or the nation.
Joe is a self-confessed science buff — he’s president of the science club — and last year became the youngest person to win the Gulf Coast Instrument Award for research he did on colony collapse disorder in honeybee populations. His interest in science is nurtured in the club, which meets once a week or so.
“We get together, put on our lab coats and Mrs. Baker puts us to work,” says Joe. “She makes it really exciting and interesting, more so even than in regular class.”
This year — the inaugural year for the science club — members simulated diabetes testing and diagnosis and participated in the “Day in the Life of the Peconic Estuary” project, where students all along the estuary simultaneously collected samples for analysis. In May they plan to tour Plum Island.
Despite having an extremely tight budget, the club is able to work on projects and experiments using equipment they already have or that is provided by Brookhaven Labs.
Here is Joe’s winning essay:
