Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
November 21, 2004
Two Pittsburgh students finished as runners-up in the team category in the regional finals of the 2004-05 Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science & Technology held at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday.
Sara Bacvinskas, of Brashear High School, and David Chancellor, of Winchester Thurston School, had entered a project called “Dirt in ‘Clean’ Green Onions: Implications for Transmission of Hepatitis A.”
The idea struck them after the largest hepatitis A outbreak of its kind occurred when 660 patrons were sickened and four died after eating contaminated green onions last year at a Chi-Chi’s in Beaver County.

As runners-up, the two 16-year-olds do not advance to the national finals of the premier scholastic science competition. However, their project was among just 54 picked for the regional finals out of 1,037 entries and, consequently, it earned $1,000 scholarships for each of them and $2,000 awards for their high schools.
Yisrael Hetzberg and Yonotan Schwab, of Rambam Mesivta High School in Lawrence, N.Y., made up the winning team with their research that focused on making nanoparticles from Palladium.
They are about 1/600th the size of a human hair and have the potential to produce non-polluting energy.
Samir Zaidi, a senior at Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., won the individual prize for his research that can expand the understanding of osteoporosis and the long-term ability to treat the bone disease.