Excellence at work

Two cases of high school science achievement

Promoting scientific excellence in high school students should be a top priority in the state’s ongoing conversations about education funding. As legislators work to finalize a new budget by the end of the fiscal year, June 30, they should keep in mind — and take inspiration from — recent triumphs at two local high schools.

For an Honors Applied Engineering class at Mt. Lebanon High School, three teenagers made a prosthetic hand for Peter Kail. Peter, 10, was born without a left hand and never had used a prosthetic. Astonishingly, the students — junior Taylor Ransford and sophomores Cameron Taylor and Robert Donahue — made the prosthetic for just $3.64 by putting it together with common household products. The devices usually cost thousands.

This feat comes just weeks after an article co-authored by Upper St. Clair High School senior Aditi Chattopadhyay was published on mdpi.com, an online home for peerreviewed scientific journals. The article, written with a University of Pittsburgh professor, suggests a protocol for deploying existing drugs against a wider range of diseases.

Both of these accomplishments, impressive at any point in an academic’s career, have come out of the classrooms of Western Pennsylvania public schools. Our legislators should invest in scientific and technological programs so Pennsylvania’s students can do their part, and leverage their talents, to keep pushing the state forward.