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Student wins 1st Breakthrough Junior Challenge prize and his school gets a new state-of-the-art science lab designed by CSHL

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
An example of one of the open, collaborative lab spaces that the DNALC has designed.
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North Royalton High School senior brings home a world prize for innovation to Ohio suburb

Cold Spring Harbor, NY — High school senior Ryan Chester was awarded the first-ever Breakthrough Junior Challenge prize during a live broadcast hosted by Seth MacFarlane on the National Geographic Channel on November 8. He’s got a lot to be proud of.  For his innovative project in physics, Chester’s school, North Royalton High School, will get a state-of-the-art science and mathematics laboratory designed by the world-renowned DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).

Seven 2015 Breakthrough Prize winners, each receiving $3 million for driving the world’s most significant advances in mathematics, physics, and life sciences, were also announced. Initiated in 2012 by leading technology entrepreneurs including founders of Facebook, Alibaba, and Google, the Breakthrough Prize annually honors outstanding achievements in life sciences, physics and mathematics.  This year’s first Breakthrough Junior Challenge, worth $400,000, called for students to create an engaging video that elucidates a complex scientific or mathematical concept for a lay audience.

The topic that captured Chester’s imagination was special relativity. In the statement he supplied with his video, he said, “Special Relativity has got to rank up there with one of the most revolutionary theories in physics… Time dilation has been in science TV shows and movies like Interstellar so often that I’ve just accepted it without understanding why it was true. So when this challenge came around I thought this area was a great one to dig into.”

North Royalton High School’s science lab was last renovated during the 1950s. Funding obstacles have stymied recent efforts to make updates. The DNA Learning Center (DNALC) plans to upgrade the classroom to 21st century standards with a design based on its highly successful open, collaborative laboratory concept. Over the past 30 years, more than 1.4 million students have gained hands-on experimentation experience through the DNALC’s approach, not only at CSHL’s facilities in Long Island, but also at DNA learning centers across the globe from Harlem, New York to Singapore.

“Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is excited to share with Ryan and the North Royalton High School our experience in designing teaching laboratory classrooms and giving students hands-on experiences in science. We look forward to working closely with the school to realize a new learning space that will inspire more children to be curious and knowledgeable about science,” says David Micklos, executive director of the DNA Learning Center.

“On behalf of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we congratulate the 2015 Breakthrough Prize winners and the first Junior Breakthrough Challenge winner Ryan Chester, who has demonstrated an impressive grasp of physics concepts and a flair for storytelling about science that makes it accessible to everyone,” says Bruce Stillman, president of CSHL.

Founded in 2012 by innovators including Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of the direct-to-consumer genetics testing company 23andMe—a 2015 Double Helix Medals honoree of CSHL—the Breakthrough Prize recognizes current scientific achievements and seeks to inspire new ones.

A one-hour version of the awards ceremony will be rebroadcast on FOX on Sunday, Nov. 29 at 7-8pm ET/PT.

Written by: Andrea Alfano, Content Developer/Communicator | publicaffairs@cshl.edu | 516-367-8455

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About Breakthrough Prize

Founded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki, Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, the Breakthrough Prize aims to celebrate science and scientists and generate excitement about the pursuit of science as a career. The prizes are funded by Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki’s foundation, the Brin Wojcicki Foundation; Mark Zuckerberg’s fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; the Jack Ma Foundation; and the Milner Global Foundation. For the first time, this year’s festivities will feature the Breakthrough Junior Challenge for students. The challenge called for students to create an engaging video that elucidates a complex scientific or mathematical concept for a lay audience.

The Breakthrough Junior Challenge—funded by a grant from Mark Zuckerberg’s fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and a grant from Milner Global Foundation, and presented in partnership with the Khan Academy—invited young people, ages 13-to-18, to create short videos that communicated big ideas in the life sciences, physics and math. The contest received more than 2,000 applications from 86 countries.

Additional information is available at www.breakthroughprize.org.

About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,000 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. The Meetings & Courses Program annually hosts more than 12,000 scientists. The Laboratory’s education arm also includes an academic publishing house, a graduate school and the DNA Learning Center with programs for middle, high school, and undergraduate students and teachers. For more information, visit www.cshl.edu