Disciplines

Like many budding engineers, Legos and Transformers were the building blocks of a growing passion for STEM within Yiru Wang ’25. The origin, however, of Wang’s engineering project that took him to two regional science fairs wasn’t found within these bins of legos, but on the Sipprelle Field House basketball courts.

Wang has been a presence in the St. Andrew’s basketball program since their III Form year, leading the varsity Constellation basketball team in three-pointers and remaining among the top scorers on the team each year. 

“I’m a basketball player myself, a student-athlete, and I’ve witnessed my teammates and myself and my coaches getting knee injuries really often,” says Wang. “And also my parents, as they get older, they are having trouble getting around, moving around, and being able to exercise their knees every single day.”

He watched as the people in his life utilized different types of knee braces to rehabilitate from their injuries, devices he classifies into two types: a cloth brace, “which is focused more on decreasing swelling in your knee and limiting blood flow,” and a “heavier, bulkier metal brace,” which he says “is mostly targeted on immobilization after surgeries to limit any kind of movement in your leg and knee.” 

Wang began to notice what he felt was a gap in these devices: What about a flexible, assistive rehabilitation device that helps an injured person facilitate gradual movements? 

Wang started to breathe life into their idea by talking to their St. Andrew’s community about it toward the end of their IV Form year. They discussed their concept with their friends on the crew team, their basketball coach, the athletic trainers, science faculty, and anyone else at St. Andrew’s with an ear to listen. 

“What definitely was the most helpful for me was their motivation and also their acknowledgement of how useful a device like this could be if I did carry out the research and manufacturing of this device,” says Wang. 

Emboldened by the community’s encouragement, Wang combed through research on pre-existing devices and materials. The summer after his IV Form year, he crafted his “pneumatic knee exoskeleton,” which consists of three sections of “airbag structures” which inflate and deflate to help the user bend and extend their knee. 

“I worked for around a month over the summer, and I worked really hard,” says Wang. “It was 10 hours per day, so that was a lot of work for me. But I really enjoyed the process. It was just a very independent research process.”

Wang learned by doing. They explored different two-dimensional and three-dimensional design software, and they learned how to sew to develop “a breathable outside layer” for the device. 

“I was able to gain so much knowledge about the medical and orthopedic rehabilitation field in general and also just learn random skills that I know will be helpful for me in the future, too,” says Wang. 

Upon his return home to China for Winter Break, Wang spent all his free time fine-tuning his project for the upcoming New Castle County Science Fair, in which he would be competing in the engineering category. 

As the science fair approached, Wang had to overcome a logistical hurdle, one that only a student attending boarding school would likely confront: How do you showcase a project that was developed on the other side of the globe? 

Wang calls the lead-up to the science fair a “chaotic“ time, as their disassembled project was shipped to St. Andrew’s from China, and they had to reassemble it on top of classwork, homework, afternoon activities, and all of the other responsibilities that come along with the St. Andrew’s experience. 

“It was really hard for me to find the time to put everything together and organize everything before the science fair,” says Wang. “I did have to stay up really late and wake up really early. It was a little bit hectic for me, but it was a really rewarding experience, finally seeing everything.”

Wang also credits his St. Andrew’s community with helping him with the little things as he prepped for the science fair, like running around campus trying to print all the materials for his poster. 

“I couldn’t have done anything without [the faculty who helped me],” says Wang. “Even though it’s an independent project, at the end of the day, it’s all those small things that other people around me helped me with that were really meaningful.”

In late March, Wang traveled to the Staton Campus of the Delaware Technical Community College for the fair, meeting other students from across the region and receiving helpful feedback from the judges. 

“It’s more than just a competition … but more of a socializing event and just being able to form those connections with like-minded people that are genuinely interested in STEM,” says Wang. 

Wang placed first in the engineering category, won the Agilent Special Award for Most Likely to Improve the Human Condition, and the FUJIFILM Special Award for Best in Show, advancing to the April 2-4 Delaware Valley Science Fairs. 

At this fair, Wang won the Office of Naval Research Naval Science Award and the West Pharmaceutical Services Engineering Award. Though this is the final fair that Wang will compete in this year, he says that this is not the end of the road for his research. 

“I still want to learn more about this area from different angles,” says Wang. “For example, maybe the biomedical angle to learn more about what can be done on the nanotechnology or micro-level. And then also more on the medicine, health side of things, like the anatomy of the knee. Knowledge in different areas can definitely help me create a more in-depth research project on top of what I already have. This is something that is going to be an ongoing process for me.”
 

Amanda Meng ’25 is not afraid to send a cold email. It was one she sent to a researcher that landed her a summer internship working in John Hopkins Medicine’s Center for Nanomedicine. 

“You don’t know what life will give you,” she says. “Sometimes [someone will] say, ‘Yeah, of course, come in.’”

She worked under scientists researching Acriflavine—a drug that is used to control Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a cause of blindness and vision impairment in older adults—and how loading the drug into microparticles (MPs) may allow for sustained release of the drug. 

Hours spent in the lab with the researchers sparked questions for Meng about how to improve the efficacy of the microparticles, and those questions informed what would become an award-winning science project at two local science fairs. 

Though she knows that her project, titled “Effect of triethylamine (TEA), homogenization speed, and extended release of acriflavine poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles,” is a mouthful and might elicit a few head-scratches, she says that the project is simple in concept. 

“I had a really good relationship with the project director and I learned a lot about the techniques and the procedure, how they did stuff,” says Meng. “And then one day I was like, ‘Wait, I think we could do better than this. I think we could take this a step further,’ because they were really limited in the drug loading, which means how much drug the particle contains. And I read up on previous literature and asked around the different researchers, and [the research says that] basically adding this substance called triethylamine is able to allow for the [microparticles] to be bigger and contain more of the drug inside.”

Additionally, she considered how homogenization speed in the preparation of the microparticles may affect the size and drug loading of the microparticles. 

Meng collected data on how adjustments in homogenization speed and the addition of TEA may affect the Acriflavine microparticles in her time at the lab. Months later in her St. Andrew’s dorm, she analyzed the data, wrote her research paper, and constructed her trifold poster for the science fair. 

“MP size is found to increase with TEA amount increase,” writes Meng in her research paper. “[However,] MP size and drug loading decreases with an increase in homogenization speed.”

At the New Castle County Science Fair, she says the judges were curious about her project and asked her questions that challenged her. She remembers a particular conversation with one of the judges that touched on a niche interest in science she wishes to pursue. 

“[The judge] majored in chemistry and philosophy, and we had a great conversation about how those different disciplines interact,” Meng says. “That’s what I’m looking to study—biology, philosophy, and chemistry.”

At this fair, she won second place in the Biochemistry Category, and at the following Delaware Valley Science Fair, she received an Honorable Mention in the Biochemistry Category and the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association - Greater Philadelphia Song Li Award.

Aside from the research team she worked with over the summer, Meng extends huge thanks to her St. Andrew’s community and, particularly, biology teacher Adam Toltin-Bitzer, for the hours they spent together in the Mein Common Room and Dining Hall discussing the project. 

“The mountain of love and effort that he gives this community is awesome,” says Meng. 

Ever since her III Form year, Meng has been eager to dive head-first into research. The Curiosity Quest, an ecology project she remembers from that year, ignited her desire for hands-on experimentation. 

“You could pick your own field of study or a question to pursue that has any interest in the environment,” she says. “How do animals interact with the environment? How do plants interact with the environment? I did my study on plants, leaves, and how the cells duplicate … That really got me excited about doing research. I love problem solving.”

Meng says a genuine love of learning, a love that is not just confined to the science laboratories but to all the different disciplines she studies at St. Andrew’s and beyond, motivates her to get her hands dirty with research and learning outside of the classroom. 

“I really, really enjoy the process of getting to learn about something new, getting to just dive into an area I know nothing about and try to piece things together myself,” says Meng. “I’ve had very long conversations with a lot of teachers about how education is not only an end, but it’s also a means to an end. You’re not just learning for the grade, you’re learning for the content. You’re learning for your curiosity. And that’s something that has brought so much meaning to the work I do.”
 

As a student in Science Department Chair Dr. Ashley Hyde’s astronomy class, Daisy Wang ’25 first became interested in gravitational lensing to detect distant exoplanets. 

“I found that really interesting so I always wanted to learn more about it,” said Wang.

The McLean Science Lecture Competition exists so students can do precisely that: learn more about the science that inspires them. Wang, along with a handful of other budding scientists at St. Andrew’s, entered this year’s competition to explore a complex topic at length and present it in the fashion of a TED Talk. Out of the students who auditioned in the first round of the competition, four students—Wang, Amanda Meng ’25, Ashley McIntosh ’25, and Lindy Black ’25—were selected for the final round of the competition which took place on Friday, March 22 in Engelhard. There, they presented their findings to students and faculty in attendance. 

A panel of science faculty, as well as 2023 finalist Zachary Macalintal ’24, served as this year’s judging panel, which selected one of the students as the overall winner of the competition. Hyde announced at a March 28 school meeting that Wang won this year’s competition. Read about the finalists’ selected topics below:

Daisy Wang ’25, “Einstein Ring: Gravitational Lensing of Distant Celestial Objects”

In her presentation, Wang explained how gravity can distort and magnify light. She focused on how this distortion of light can form an Einstein Ring, a phenomenon in which a ring of light can be observed when a light source passes by a massive object en route to Earth. To fully break down the Einstein Ring, Wang explored Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the history of the Einstein Ring, and the different types of gravitational lensing. 

She asserted that the Einstein Ring and other types of gravitational lensing are more than just an interesting observation—they allow scientists to discover more about the universe. She explained that gravitational lensing helps scientists detect distant exoplanets, understand the early universe and the structure and distribution of dark matter, and learn more about the light sources themselves. 

“Because of the magnification effect [of gravitational lensing, it] can help us detect things that we cannot otherwise detect using the technology we have right now,” said Wang. 

Wang says she was honored to be selected as this year’s winner because of just how strong all of the finalists’ talks were. 

“Before the actual talk I was really nervous, but when I actually got on stage, it felt natural,” says Wang. “Going into the competition, I wasn’t really thinking about winning. I just wanted to do my best to present [my research].”

Amanda Meng ’25, “Hey Siri, When Will I Die?: Using Live Events and Machine Learning to Predict Mortality and Extraversion”

Do you find AI scary? Do you have a basic understanding of AI?

Meng posed these questions to the student body as she delivered her science lecture.

“I think a lot of our fear comes from our misunderstanding of this technology,” said Meng. “I hope my talk today serves as an interesting way for us to know and interact with the fundamentals of computer science and machine learning. And through this, we’re able to better recognize and reexamine our relationship with technology and machine learning around us.”

Then, Meng ripped her index cards in half. She said she didn’t fully write the introduction herself, but she did with the assistance of ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot. 

“That just [goes] to show how powerful machine learning models today have become,” she said. “And that this is a topic [that is] more relevant than ever.”

In Meng’s lecture, she went beyond a surface-level discussion of AI and dove deep into applications of AI that can help us learn more about ourselves. 

Meng broke down the definitions of AI, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. She used these concepts as the building blocks to discuss the focus of her presentation: Life2Vec, an AI model that attempts to predict human mortality. Meng explained how scientists collected millions of “life sequences” in order to identify the factors that influence mortality and to make predictions about when people might die. She extended the conversation about Life2Vec into other applications of the model, which includes predicting the sociability of a person based on the same life sequences. 

“Now, can we actually predict when we die?” asked Meng. “Technically, no. Because each of our lives are so unique that we encounter so many individual circumstances, we don’t really know what happens to us tomorrow or the day after. And as a result of our uniqueness, the machine is actually not able to produce an estimate on one certain individual. However, because of the good and vast amount of data the machine has been trained on, we’re actually really good at predicting data and mortality on a bunch of people.”

Ashley McIntosh ’25, “Alternative Medicine: How Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) Can Mitigate the Use of Opioids”

Like Meng, fellow presenter McIntosh did not shy away from serious topics, with McIntosh’s presentation exploring a potential treatment for those addicted to opioids. 

“Coming from the inner cities of New York, it is not uncommon to see pill bottles and needles and other remnants of addictive medicines lying on the sides of the road,” said McIntosh.

In her presentation, McIntosh defined what opioids are, how they work in the brain, and their addictive nature. She then introduced TENS, a medical device which generates electrical currents to nerve pathways in order to alleviate pain. 

She thoroughly discussed the neurobiological mechanisms behind TENS, yet also focused on the clinical practice and application of TENS and the future and viability of it as a potential long-term solution to opioid addiction. 

“[TENS] is still subject to ongoing research, clinical implementation, and healthcare policy considerations,” said McIntosh. 

Lindy Black ’25, “Mother Nature’s Solution to Climate Change: The Key to Reversing Post Industrial Revolution Burning of Fossil Fuels”

In the final presentation of the night, Black tackled what she called “Mother Nature’s solution to climate change”: cover crops. But before she got there, she helped the audience understand the science behind climate change and the dilemma of Taylor Swift superfans: loving her music, but not the massive amounts of carbon emissions caused by the star’s travel. 

Black’s upbringing growing up on a tree farm inspired her to research this topic. 

“The topic of plants and trees and the innovation and the experimentation that’s happening in that field … [comes up] at the dinner table every night,” said Black. 

She defined the greenhouse effect and its impact on the planet and how that relates to the carbon cycle. Cover crops, she explained, help offset carbon emissions by increasing the percentage of soil organic matter in soil, which stores carbon in the ground. These crops are planted in the offseason of cash crops. Black notes that they do not only store carbon in their roots, the soil, and their stems and leaves, but they replenish the soil with nutrients and help to prevent wind and water erosion. 

Black argued that we can all play a part in mitigating the effects of climate change by planting cover crops in our own backyards and educating people about and advocating for this type of sustainable farming.

“All you have to do is look up the word ‘cover crops' and all of the sudden, you’ll have products popping up for you to buy and for you to plant in your backyard so you can take part in the reversal of the warming of the planet,” said Black. 

Watch the full video of the McLean Science Lecture Competition here.
 

Earlier today, Head of School Joy McGrath ’92 announced to the community that the Reverend Michael Giansiracusa has been appointed as St. Andrew’s head chaplain, effective July 1, 2024. She thanked the dozens of community members who participated in the search, including members of the student vestry, the student interfaith council, and a faculty search committee of Ana Ramírez, Terence Gilheany, and Dave DeSalvo.

As head chaplain, Michael will lead spiritual life at the school, direct the school’s chapel program, and be responsible for defining, preserving, and promoting the school’s Episcopal identity to all constituencies. In overseeing the school’s chapel program, Michael will preside at services three times each week, and manage the student-led chapel guilds and vestry, as well as the chapel team.

Michael joins St. Andrew’s with extensive experience in spiritual leadership and campus ministry. He currently serves as chaplain at Doane Academy, an Episcopal K-12 school where he also teaches World Religions, and as vicar at St. Gabriel’s, a mission church in Philadelphia. Prior to Doane and St. Gabriel’s, Michael spent 13 years leading urban and suburban parishes, including Episcopal Community Services (Philadelphia, Pa.), where he engaged in a variety of nonprofit work; the Romero Center (Camden, N.J.), where he led college and high school mission retreats; and St. Mary’s (Ardmore, Pa.) where he served as rector.

Earlier in his career, Michael taught religion, English, and film at various secondary schools including St. Mark’s (Wilmington, Del.), Malvern Prep (Malvern, Pa.), and Bishop Eustace Prep (Pennsauken Township, N.J.). It was during this time he spent teaching that he discerned a call to the Episcopal priesthood, attended Episcopal Divinity School, and earned a doctorate in Ministry. Michael is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Michael attended LaSalle University, where he studied communication arts with minors in philosophy and English; and Villanova University, where he earned an M.A. in religious studies. Michael is a rabid Philadelphia sports fan, enjoys film and cooking, and is an animal rights advocate. He is father to a son, Michael, who attends Villanova University as a VUScholar.

“Of course, I knew of the excellent reputation that St. Andrew’s has for academics, the chapel program, and the varieties of sports and activities available,” Michael said. “What was eye-opening to me was the honest effort not to rest on reputation, but to actively look to create opportunities to be better. Although this is a community that is firmly rooted in faith, St. Andrew’s does not forget that, in the end, beyond any accolades and traditions, a community is about relationships and the care and concern community members have for one another. There is no substitute for the support, safety, and love of a community. This is what convinced me that St. Andrew’s is where I wanted to be.”

Joy wrote in her announcement to the school that, “Michael stood out in an impressive field of candidates as a person with both a lively Christian faith and a calling to serve adolescents in a religiously diverse Episcopal school setting. Students and faculty alike identified him as the next person to lead St. Andrew’s chapel program and spiritual life.”

Michael was identified as St. Andrew’s next head chaplain from a field of outstanding candidates in an exhaustive and inclusive national search. He succeeds The Rev. Jay Hutchinson as chaplain. Jay Hutchinson retired from St. Andrew’s in June 2023 and joined St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts. Previously retired St. Andrew’s Head Chaplain Rev. David DeSalvo P’00,’04 has returned to lead the school’s chapel program in the interim.

From the moment his parents bestowed on him a hand-me-down iPhone 4 when he was younger, capturing beauty with a camera has fascinated William Lin ’24. 

But his first year at St. Andrew’s was a turning point for his hobby. He honed his photography skills and deepened his passion for the art form as he traveled around China taking pictures of “different scenes, different people, [and] different cultures.”

Lin spent his first year at St. Andrew’s in an atypical fashion: abroad in his home city of Beijing, China, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced students to forgo a normal year of school. 

A year later, he was finally on campus and in Dean of Studies Melinda Tower’s history classroom, taking “A World at War,” an advanced study course that explores 20th-Century wars and why they started, the way they were fought, and why they ended.

The gears started to turn for Lin. In the classroom, with conversations centered on photo censorship during World War II, he found himself at the intersection of his love of history and his passion for photography.

This brewing interest in censorship followed him into his V Form year. While taking “Research Seminar,” an advanced study history course that immerses students in scholarly research and challenges them to write a thoughtful research paper, he decided to explore the topic that piqued his curiosity in “A World at War.” 

When Victor Cuicahua, a former St. Andrew’s faculty member and then-instructor of the seminar, read Lin’s paper, “Whitewashing the War: U.S. Censorship of Photography during World War II,” he was impressed.
 
Lin remembers that Cuicahua pointed out the exceptional nature of the paper, and urged Lin to submit it to The Concord Review, a highly selective quarterly academic journal, the only such journal that exists that offers secondary students the opportunity to submit academic history papers. Emboldened by his instructor’s feedback, he pushed “submit.” And then the waiting game began.

“I got the news during senior orientation on my watch,” Lin recalls of the beginning of this school year. “My watch is one of those where you get the text but it doesn’t show the entire text, so I was looking at it, and it was like, ‘Dear William, I’m writing to tell you that your paper has been’ and it just cuts off there.”

The anticipation was almost unbearable for the next several hours as Lin sat through orientation, waiting to read the remainder of that email. He exercised one of the many virtues of Saints: patience. 

It paid off: his paper had been accepted for publication. His essay was one of 11 featured in the fall issue of The Concord Review, written by student scholars around the world. It was published in early September.

In the paper, Lin argues that the U.S. government instituted a “carefully managed censorship regime” during the second World War for a two-fold purpose: to minimize racial tensions and conflict in the United States by hiding racism in the military, and to conceal the degree to which racial integration was present in the military to avoid angering prejudiced Americans. 

Reflecting on the thought-provoking classroom conversations that shaped his paper, Lin remembers a particular conversation with Tower regarding a Dorothea Lange photo—the unmistakable “Migrant Mother” photo from the Great Depression. Lin discovered through this conversation that the photographer had taken that photo without permission, and that the woman in the image disputed the photo as she refused to be seen as a symbol of the Depression. 

Conversations like this one with Tower—as well as with Cuicahua and Dean of Students Matthew Carroll, the other faculty member heading the seminar—illuminated for Lin that there are complex depths behind a simple photo: layers of interpretation, censorship, intent, and more. 

Through a historical and artistic lens, Lin brought these layers into dialogue with one another in his research. Beyond what he discusses in the paper, Lin also recognizes implications of historical censorship on contemporary issues. 

“I think [censorship of photography] is going to be a relevant topic, even though censorship is not necessarily a main thing that is happening right now because there’s so many avenues with the internet and social media [for images to spread],” Lin says. “But with generative [artificial intelligence] and generative imaging, it’s more of an issue of deep fakes and misinformation. I’m certainly looking forward to looking deeper into this in college and finding a new direction.”