"I called my mom a few minutes after they announced the winners and she was screaming and my dad was crying," Jeremy Appelbaum said.
"My parents can't believe what happened. I still can't believe it," William Gil said.
Since their freshman year, the trio has been working in a lab at Hewlett High School studying ferns that contain a protein also found in humans.
They were trying to understand how that protein is involved in causing cancer. Their method of studying is the most advanced and developed out there right now.
They presented the method on Monday in Washington, DC in front of a panel of judges.
Then Tuesday, they received the amazing news.
Not only did their project beat out 1,500 others but they each won $33,000 in college scholarships.
"Maybe as we go to college we could do it in a college facility where we have more equipment and more funding," Allen Shin stated.
Their mentor and teacher, Dr. Terrence Bissoondial, can still remember when the three students came into his classroom three years ago.
"They wanted to study all these other grandiose and magnificent topics and then I told them were going to be study plants and I could see this look of depression settling now. No depression now though. No, no depression now," Dr. Bissoondial said.
With this sort of accomplishment you would obviously expect nothing but big things from these kids. When asked what they want to do when they are older, their answers included a doctor, surgeon and biomedical engineer.
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