After winning, 17-year-old Michelle Abi Hackman came home to Kings Point, New York, to chants of “Mich-ELLE, Mich-ELLE!” and “Mazel Tov!”
Each year, around 1,700 teens enter the competition, which began in 1942 as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. The top 300 receive cash prizes of $1,000 for themselves and their schools. The top 40 are then selected to be interviewed during a weeklong, all-expense paid trip to Washington, DC, to complete a process that includes a research paper, letters of recommendation, essays, tests scores, extracurricular activities and transcripts.
The top 10 receive prizes of $20,000 to $100,000 and are also honored in a meeting with the president. This is often the beginning of even higher honors as seven finalists and winners of the competition in past years having gone on to receive Nobel Prizes.
It is no surprise then that Michelle was greeted so enthusiastically by more than three dozen friends and family members from the Great Neck-area of Long Island. The close-knit community, which has grown to about 6,000 predominantly Jewish Iranians since the revolution in 1979, was eager to recognize the achievement of this 12th-grader from Great Neck North High School.
“Every time somebody gets engaged, we have a party like this,” said Hackman, whose name is an Anglicized version of Hakimian. “But we’ve never done it for a science competition before. I’m really excited about it, and I hope other people will be inspired.”
Hackman’s year-long behavioral and social sciences research project assessed the anxiety felt by individuals separated from their cellphones. Because she lost her sight as a small child, Michelle trained 10 assistants to administer the test she designed to more than 150 high school students, while she read and analyzed the results through help of a computer software that speaks text. Her research showed there was no significant difference between groups with or deprived of their cellphones, but there was evidence of addictive tendencies being exhibited when students were separated from their cellphones.
Other 2011 winners of Intel STS include third place and $50,000-prize-winner Mathew Miller of Elon, North Carolina, who found how to increase the efficiency and change the aerodynamics of wind turbines by placing small bumps on the surface of the blades.
The first place prize of $100,000 was awarded to 17-year-old Evan O’Dorney of Danville, California, who solved a complex math problem that compared ways of solving an integer’s square root. One byproduct of the home-schooled prodigy’s research, says Intel, is that he has also solved other equations useful for data encryption.
“All of these students are scientists,” said Wendy Hawkins, executive director of the Intel Foundation, which sponsors the event. “They have those abilities, that knowledge and that approach to look at the world. These students go on and do wonderful things in ways both expected and unexpected.” Hawkins added that often the students have work that is either published or ready to be published in science journals and more, as “the projects are deep and rich and insightful.”
Dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education, the nonprofit organization Society for Science & the Public (SSP) hopes to provide a stage for the best young scientists through the Intel Science Talent Search.
The competition, which President George H.W. Bush called the “Super Bowl of science,” came into existence when the organization teamed up with Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1942. For the next 57 years, it was known as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search before Intel took over as the sponsor. The Intel Foundation has increased the awards by more than $1 million over the last 13 years; a total of $1.25 million was conferred this year.
The SSP also does another competition parallel to Intel Science Talent Search, called the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Unlike the former, which is only for high school seniors, ISEF is open to students in grades 9-12 and includes more than 1,600 young scholars from nearly 60 countries and regions. In 2000, 18-year-old Iranian-American Nazanin-Jouie of Florida shared the honor of top prize at ISEF for her research into how the eye responds to and takes in light.
As Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini put it, these young mathematicians and scientists, “hold tremendous potential to move our country forward.”
Michelle Hackman is not only spending her time researching, but also sings in a jazz choir and started a recycling program. And she has raised money with a friend to fund and promote construction of a school in Cambodia for disadvantaged girls.
