Buchholz High School senior places fourth in prestigious, nationwide STEM competition
An Alachua County Public Schools student has won a top prize in the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS).
Nathan Wei, a senior at Buchholz High School, placed fourth in the national competition's finals in Washington, D.C., and won $100,000 with his research project, titled "Novel Elastomeric Polystyrene via Photopolymerization and Post-Functionalization of Durable Ultra-High Molecular Weight Perfluorostyrene Copolymers," which a news release said “involves the development of a plastic that is strong, recyclable and made from renewable resources.”
The 17-year-old student began his research about 2 years ago with the help of Brent Sumerlin, a University of Florida chemistry professor who let Wei work in a UF research laboratory.
Chosen as finalist: Alachua County student among 40 finalists in prestigious science and math competition
“There's a certain category of plastics that are physically unrecyclable,” Wei said. “When we use these plastics, they end up in landfills and we just have no way to recycle them, which is really bad… The reason we can't give up on using these plastics yet is that they have certain physical properties and chemical resistance that your average recyclable plastic doesn't have… So, in my project, I developed a recyclable plastic that mimics the same properties these unrecyclable plastics had, and so hopefully this can help create a more sustainable alternative to traditionally unrecyclable plastics.”
Wei said the project is important to him because plastic pollution will continue to be a problem long-term. He applied to Regeneron STS with a 20-page paper detailing his research.
“It’s a huge problem,” he said. “As someone who's part of the younger generation — and has kind of grown up seeing the effects of pollution and climate change in general — I want to do something that can kind of help — help reduce these problems and fix these problems.”
About the competition
Regeneron STS is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. This year’s finalists were chosen from 36 schools across 19 states and included Wei, placing him amongst the nation’s best science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) students.
The competition received 2,162 total entries made up of students from across the U.S. and 10 other nations — the largest applicant pool since the 1960s, the Society for Science says. The website says finalists were selected based on “the originality and creativity of their scientific research as well as their achievement and leadership both inside and outside of the classroom.”
Initially, 300 students were chosen as 2024 Regeneron Scholars. Only 40 students — selected from the 300 scholars — were invited to present their research projects in the Finals Week competition in Washington, D.C., from March 7-13 and received $25,000 each. Wei was one of two finalists from Florida.
He received a $2,000 cash award and another $2,000 for STEM programs at Buchholz High for being recognized as a scholar as well as a $25,000 award for being chosen as a finalist. Wei also won $100,000 for placing fourth in the finals, which will be put toward his higher education.
Additionally, Wei is a 2024 National Merit Semifinalist and earned the highest possible score on the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. He is also a part of Buchholz’s national championship math team. Wei will enter another competition in early April called the Florida State Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) using his research from the past year. His goal, Wei said, is to be one of the top eight to quality for the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).
Wei said he plans to choose between Princeton University, where he's already been accepted, or Harvard University, which he’s waiting on a decision from, and major in chemistry. He wants to eventually pursue a Ph.D. and go into academia and research. The Sun previously reported that Wei wants to go into the academic world, teaching and inspiring students while also completing groundbreaking research and discoveries.
“This is something they kind of talked about a lot at Regeneron, which is basically like, we're training the future generation of people who are going to save the world, save the planet, solve all these problems,” he said. “Whatever I do want to research, I want it to be really focused at helping to tackle these really big problems in our world.”
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Alachua County student places fourth in Regeneron science competition
