GCHS Senior Named Siemens Science Semifinalist

Suburbanites love their lush green lawns. Whether to pass the football over, run through in bare feet or simply laid as a welcoming carpet before colorful flower beds ringing home and property, lawn grass is king in the ‘burbs.

Problem is, the use of fertilizers that feed those verdant lawns adds pollutants to the environment. To address the problem, one high school research student imagined a more natural way to dress a property using native grasses that perform double-duty as filters for fertilizer and road salt residues.

Garden City High School senior Michael Cassano began his work with grasses native to his own Long Island back yard, seeking to define a solution to the chemical imbalances wrought by hundreds of well-intended homeowners and road crews.

In 2010, Michael joined the Friends of Hempstead Plains, an organization formed in 2001 “dedicated to the perpetual preservation, restoration and management of the site through scientific research and education.”

The two-acre parcel of preserved land acquired by the Friends sits in the heart of Nassau County - a tiny remnant of a once vast inland prairie called the Hempstead Plains. Situated adjacent to Nassau Community College, the preserve contains native plants, small mammals, birds, and insects, and served as the center of Michael’s field work.

The young naturalist developed a research project with Dr. Steven Gordon, the high school’s science research teacher, based on his quest to seek an alternative to lawn grasses.

“I wanted to show that native grasses can be more beneficial than lawn grasses and act as anti-pollutants to the chemicals that exist in lawn fertilizers and road salts,” Michael said. “My work determined that the native prairie grass ‘Little Bluestem’ absorbed more ionic pollutants than Long Island’s ubiquitous lawn grass.”

Ultimately, these findings lead him to be selected as a finalist in the 2012 Museum of Natural History Young Naturalist Awards. “Winning an award based on work done in my high school lab was very rewarding, but I wanted to go to the next level and do research in a professional lab,” Michael said.

He subsequently took that next step by studying a flowering plant: Agalinis acuta, the only federally-endangered plant species in New York. This semi-annual is hemi-parasitic, using the roots of host plants to obtain the nutrients it needs to survive. He set out to learn everything he could about the endangered plant, right down to its DNA sequencing.

Michael took a plant genomics course offered at Cold Spring Harbor DNA Learning Center, where he collaborated with plant geneticist Dr. Bruce Nash who supervised his use of lab equipment to further his research. In order to protect and (hopefully) allow Agalinis acuta to proliferate once again, Michael needed to identify the host plant.

“Nothing was known about what host species were used by Agalinis,” he said. To unravel the mystery, he took samples to Cold Spring Harbor Lab and, by isolating the plants’ DNA, identified the host species of the endangered plant as Sorghustrum nutans (Indian Grass).

“Finding a host species was one more way to contribute to my local environment,” the young researcher said. “I feel proud knowing that I am contributing to help save the only federally endangered plant species in New York State.”

For his efforts and discovery, Michael Cassano was named a 2013 Siemens Competition in Math Science and Technology national semifinalist.

“A record number of submissions were entered this year, 1,973 projects, comprising 2,440 of the top students in the United States,” Dr. Gordon said. “Of this pool, only 238 projects, 12 percent, were chosen as national semifinalists. Michael’s project involved years of fieldwork with the Friends of the Hempstead Plains. It’s nice to see all of his hard work paying off!”

Moving forward, the tiny remnant of the Hempstead Plains will not only be the New York State nursery for Agalinis and its Indian Grass host, but will also include a new Education and Research Center, which, thanks to Michael, will sport a “green roof” of grasses the young researcher grew for his Eagle Scout project.

Submitted by the Garden City School District