Junior Reid Biondo recently attended the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair, a competition for the most advanced high school projects.

His research, “Convolutional Neural Network Classifier for Antarctic Seals,” was based upon a long-standing association with Dr. Heather Lynch, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Reid conducted research in the Lynch Lab for Quantitative Ecology during his freshman and sophomore years of high school. He wrote code to take geotagged images from the internet and analyze them to gain a better understanding of specific Antarctic seal distribution.

Reid had the unique opportunity to be the only student from the school to attend the eminent event and present and explain his work to experts in their subject areas from local universities, scientific institutions, professionals and peers from other high schools. He was accompanied by science teacher Michel Krivosta.

“The LISEF competition was a great opportunity to be around other students with similar interests in research,” Reid said. “I look forward to continuing my research efforts at Stony Brook University this summer.”