GCHS students win awards at engineering fair

Garden City High School junior James Nagler was awarded the Office of Naval Research’s US Navy and Marine Corps Special Award at the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair. Garden City High School sophomore Mannat Jain was also selected as a Long Island Science and Engineering Fair finalist.

The award was presented to James by Lieutenant Arthur Morales B.S. of the Office of Naval Research, who was also a judge in the competition.

According to the Naval Sciences Awards Program, the Office of Naval Research Award recognizes a select group of about 800 outstanding high school students at science fairs around the country each year. The purpose of these awards are to support STEM students in contributing to America’s science programs.

James’ project, “Project Shadow: Custom Wireless Safety Tracker for Schools,” involved designing and constructing a completely functional prototype to keep track of students during an emergency event in a school to ensure that all students are accounted for.

In the combined category of Embedded Systems, Robotics and Intellectual Machines and System Software, James was also awarded the third-place Grand Award out of a field of 22 projects. James will continue developing his project to achieve advances in school safety and he will begin a separate mentored project at the Research Science Institute at MIT this summer.

Garden City High School sophomore Mannat Jain was selected as a Long Island Science and Engineering Fair finalist for his project, “Using Machine Learning to Conduct Real-Time Translation of Sign Language into the Spoken Word.” Mannat scored in the top five in the combined category of Embedded Systems, Robotics and Intellectual Machines and System Software with an Honorable Mention award.

Superintendent of Garden City Schools Dr. Kusum Sinha congratulated both students saying, “I am so proud of James and Mannat for their remarkable achievements. I’m continuously impressed by their aptitude for science and the hard work that has led to these tremendous recognitions. They are well-deserved.”