AWARD-WINNING SCIENTISTS: Princeton High School Seniors, from left, Benjamin Murphy Gitai, Yurai Gutierrez Morales, and Amy Lin were in the nation’s top 300 teen scientists in the 2025 Regeneron Science Talent Search. On January 23, Morales was selected as one of 40 finalists, and she will travel to Washington, D.C., in March to compete to become one of the top 10 winners in the country. (Photo courtesy of Mark Eastburn)

By Donald Gilpin

Princeton High School (PHS) Senior Yurai Gutierrez Morales has been selected as one of 40 finalists nationwide in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, competing for a top prize of $250,000.

Based on the originality and creativity of their scientific research, as well as their achievement and leadership inside and outside the classroom, the finalists, who were announced on January 23, were selected from a record number of 2,471 entrants.

Two other PHS seniors, Benjamin Murphy Gitai and Amy Lin, were among the 300 national semifinalists. This was the first time PHS has ever had three students in the top 300 and the first time a PHS student has ever advanced to the top 40.

Morales will participate in a week-long competition from March 6-12 in Washington, D.C., undergoing a rigorous judging process, interacting with leading scientists, and sharing her research with the public on March 9, both in person and virtually. The top 10 Regeneron Science Talent Search 2025 winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on March 11.

PPS Science Supervisor Jacqueline Katz praised the student award winners and reflected on the development of the popular research program at PHS, which she started 10 years ago. “It’s a positive space for students like this,” she said. “They totally take ownership and figure out what they’re interested in, and then you see them run with it. It’s so incredible.”

The Regeneron Science Talent Search, sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and the Society for Science, now in its 84th year, is the United States’ longest running science, technology, engineering, and math (STEAM) competition for high school seniors. Alumni from the competition have gone on to win 13 Nobel Prizes and 23 MacArthur Fellowships, and have founded numerous world-changing companies, according to a Regeneron press release.

“The competition identifies extraordinary young minds who blend scientific talent, curiosity, and bold leadership to drive meaningful change for society,” the press release states.

Morales discussed her award-winning research project, which is titled “How the Lion Becomes a Lamb: Transfer of Bacterial Symbionts From Ant Larvae to Vegetarian Spiders Through Selective Predation.”

“I was wondering why the jumping spider would be vegetarian, so I started doing this research into how the spider, in a body designed to be carnivorous, remains a vegetarian,” she said. The spiders are 90 percent vegetarian, but they eat the larvae of ants, she discovered, and through that they get enough nitrogen to survive.

Morales, who was born in this country, had to move back to Guatemala when she was 7, and grew up there until moving to Mexico at age 14, where she waited for almost three years before returning to the U.S. She has had to catch up on her English language learning, but it was in Mexico that she found the jumping spiders and carried out much of her research.

“This project has been really important to me,” she said. “I come from a family that doesn’t have a lot of resources. This is such a great opportunity, and I was very glad that I discovered the spiders. I was almost crying. I didn’t expect to be able to do this kind of research. For the future I’m going to keep going with more research about spiders and other animals and humans. I have a lot of plans.” Morales will be a freshman at The College of New Jersey next fall.

PHS Science Teacher Mark Eastburn explained some of the attributes that help to make Morales such a successful scientist. “Yurai is an incredible observer,” he said. “She asks really good questions, makes strong observations, and she is determined to find answers to the questions she asks. All of those qualities are the hallmark of a great scientist.”

Lin’s research project involved predicting melting temperatures of different materials by using machine learning models. “At the same time I didn’t just want to predict the melting temperature. I also wanted to find out what was going on behind the scenes,” she said.

Emphasizing her enthusiasm for coding and AI machine learning, Lin said she would be pursuing this field in the future. “I want to build it in a direction where first of all the work can be used to predict other material properties,” she added. She also sees future applications in construction and the development of tools for efficient fuel cells and for clean energy and environmental sustainability.

As she continues her education in college next year, she hopes to apply AI and machine learning to the health care field and to develop technologies that will enhance assisted living and the creation of social robots to help the elderly.

“My grandmother in China struggles with insomnia,” said Lin. “I’ve always been interested in how we can find out more about how the brain works and to develop technologies to help people like my grandmother.”

Gitai’s research involved the creation of a computer vision for ankle replacement surgery. As an athlete and a member of the PHS track team, Gitai was interested in ankle replacement technology, and he was also aware of the field through his grandmother, who has had hip replacements. “That’s why I applied to be part of a research program at Princeton University last summer that was working on ankle issues,” he said. “I asked if they would allow me to work on this as my project. They gave me free rein to do what I wanted to do with this, and it ended up going great.”

Gitai, who will be a freshman at Princeton University next fall, was able to use AI to help automate getting measurements and making predictions for ankle surgery. He created a quick and efficient pipeline and devised an algorithm to detect any bone. “I was specifically doing this for bones related to ankle replacement surgery, but the thing that is very cool about this is that I can apply it to any sort of system I want, not just ankle replacements,” he said. “This could be used for any part of the body.”

A student in PPS since kindergarten, Gitai commented on the encouragement and the extraordinary education in science he has enjoyed. “At the elementary school they would send students from the high school research program to the school to talk about the research program and encourage us to think about science — not as something we do after college or something like that, but something that we can be doing as early as elementary school and middle school and through high school. They encouraged us to be doing science we enjoy and that we didn’t have to wait until later on to do those things.”

Gitai and Lin, and the other top 300 scholars, will each receive $2,000 from Regeneron, and PHS will receive $6,000 to support math and science programs. Morales, as one of the top 40, will be awarded at least $25,000, with the top 10 awards ranging from $40,000 to $250,000.

Eastburn, who has worked with all three of the student winners over the years, commented on the young science scholars and the STEM program at PPS.

“This is such a unique community,” he said. “I can’t imagine another place that could be as rewarding to teach in as PHS. It’s certainly a frantic pace that we maintain, but when you have a moment like this, it all comes together. It’s so powerful when students do so well. It’s a cool thing — the most fulfilling outcome I could possibly hope for.”

“We celebrate this exceptional group of Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists for their outstanding achievements,” said Maya Ajmera, president and CEO of Society for Science and executive publisher of Science News. “These young people represent the future of innovation. By nurturing the next generation of scientific and engineering leaders, we are investing in a stronger economy and a better tomorrow, fueled by scientific and technological breakthroughs.”