Firester among equals

It may have a different name now, but the Westinghouse Science Talent Search has long honored America’s best young scientists. Many of them, of course, are in New York City. Benjy Firester, a Hunter College High School senior, took the top prize — and $250,000 — among more than 1,000 competitors in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search. His “Modeling the Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Phytophthora infestans on a Regional Scale,” which sounds a wee bit more sophisticated than our science fair project, studied weather patterns to determine how potato blight spores (remember the Irish hunger?) spread on the wind. That will help farmers combat the crop-killing disease using targeted chemical treatments.

Next stop, the Nobel.