Rocky Point High School senior research students Om Patel and Zen Pinkenburg have advanced to the second round of the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair. They will present their work to judges at the Crest Hollow Country Club on March 13. 

A competition for the most advanced high school projects, LISEF participants in this Fair present to professionals in their subject areas from local universities, scientific institutions and professionals in the field.  

Om and Zen conducted their work at Brookhaven National Laboratory. They used deep learning and AI to improve how the sPHENIX detector at BNL processes data from high-energy particle collisions. Their machine-learning model analyzes signals from the detector and accurately measures key details like energy and timing. This approach makes data analysis faster and more precise, helping scientists better study the properties of matter at extreme conditions. According to Om and Zen, the model performed very well compared to traditional methods, showing strong potential for improving research efficiency. 

“Moving forward, we plan to refine our model and integrate it more smoothly into the sPHENIX system to further enhance data processing,” they said in their research statement.

To get to this point in the competition Om and Zen submitted a formal science research paper detailing their methodologies, results and conclusions along with a video presentation of their findings to judges.