By Anne Levin
Some enterprising high school students have recently shared details of projects they have developed that go beyond the classroom. These are as focused on giving back to the community as they are on creating new products and ideas.
Tackling Plastic Waste
When a group of five New Jersey high school students interning at the Princeton [University] Laboratory Learning Program this past summer realized that only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled globally and 7 million tons of plastic bottles go unrecycled each year, they got to work.
Among them were Princeton High School senior Harrison Knoch and Lawrenceville School senior Abhinav Sukla. Along with fellow interns Ritwik Singh, Suvit Asnani, and John Change, all from High Technology High School in Lincroft, they created Project Respindle, which uses 3D printers to turn plastic bottles collected from the community into trash grabbers and trash bags.
“It’s a big problem,” Knoch said of the waste crisis. “We’re engineers, so we tried to engineer a solution. With 3D filament there are endless opportunities. You can do almost anything. We decided to print out these trash grabbers and bags. In a way, we created this positive feedback — the plastic collected can be used to create more plastic.”
It took a couple of months to get started. “We had to get the right machines,” said Sukla. “We spent the entire month of August working on the 3D models from scratch. Around early October, we started production of these tools and we also made our first donations.”
Project Respindle has partnered with Mazza Recycling, Clean Ocean Action, and Stroke Your ECO. At two events in October, they donated 40 of the 3D-printed clean up tools to volunteers at Clean Ocean Action’s fall beach sweep and Stroke Your Eco’s bimonthly cleanup.
“We’re definitely interested in staying a nonprofit,” said Knoch. “We get all our materials as donations. But there is potential for expansion into a business model.”
For more information contact respindle@gmail.com.
A New Take on Affordable Housing
Driving by the “Defend Historic Princeton” signs on lawns between her family’s Greek Revival house and Princeton Day School (PDS) senior Phoebe Dickler was curious about their origin.
When she saw the proposed design for the housing project at part of the Princeton Theological Seminary campus on Stockton Street, she began to think about other alternatives.
“These big apartment complexes — I just don’t understand,” she said. “Why wasn’t there a simpler solution? So I thought I’d try myself.”
A student of architecture at PDS, Dickler was interested in creating a design that better reflected the historic fabric of the surrounding neighborhood.
“My design took inspiration from the Charles Steadman houses in Princeton,” she said. “I live in a Greek Revival house myself, so it was easy for me. I wanted it to be unassuming from the front. Each townhouse is a duplex, but you can’t tell from the front. I tried to incorporate sustainable finishes. I wanted the townhouses to be not too tall but still have three floors, because I understand that height is a big concern.”
Neighborhood resident Caroline Cleaves, who is active in opposition to the proposed project, sent Dickler the proposed renderings (Dickler knew Cleaves because she used to play soccer with her daughter). She also spoke with Mayor Mark Freda and Princeton’s Planning Director Justin Lesko.
“Seeing the renderings, I could immediately tell this was something really out of character for Princeton,” she said. “As a budding architect who loves Princeton, I could see that this was not going to fit. I know that there is a waiting list for affordable housing of more than 1,000 families. The proposed building only has the minimum requirement of 20 percent affordable. I wanted to design something where at least 80 to 90 percent are affordable.”
View Dickler’s designs at phoebedickler.wixsite.com/rafaprojectprinceton/about-1-1.
A Personal Finance Brand Emphasizing Rare Cancer Research
Aarush Shah has been interested in finance since middle school. Currently a junior at the Hun School, he runs Shah Trades, sharing trading insights and market analysis.
Shah’s mother has metaplastic carcinoma, a rare form of breast cancer that returned this past summer. While she is finished her treatments and doing well, he said, he realized that there is a lack of research on the kind of rare cancer she has.
“I expanded to include financial oncology research,” he said. “I wanted to explore how capital markets overlook rare cancer therapies and how better funding models could change that.”
On Shah’s website (shahtrades.weebly.com), he cites his recent work, “Why Rare Cancers are Financial Orphans.” The paper “bridges finance and oncology, exposing how capital markets fail ultra-rare cancers and proposing actionable fixes for investors and policymakers.”
Shah’s research has been showcased in the Curieux Academic Journal, which publishes exceptional research by high school and middle school students in any academic subject. He has been in touch with some doctors, who have promoted his work.
“Nothing crazy yet. Obviously I’m still in high school, so it still needs validation,” he said. “I made a financial modeling kit on rare cancers, which are different but should not be neglected. Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean people don’t have it. It is seen as unprofitable right now. But it’s not just about money, it’s about lives.”