Israeli students visit Bronx Science

After welcoming Bronx High School of Science graduate Dani Neuman and six of his students from an Israeli entrepreneurship program, Assistant Principal David Colchamiro took them to one of the engineering labs.

“They’re all young entrepreneurs. They’ve all invented an app and are ready to exit and make millions of dollars... and support me! No, just kidding,” Mr. Neuman said, introducing his students.

Mr. Neuman is chief philanthropic officer at the AMAL group of technology-oriented schools in Israel. For this trip, six students from the program were asked to come and tour various high schools in the United-States.

Mr. Colchamiro said he was pleased to accommodate the visit from a Bronx Science graduate. He and engineering teacher and researcher Robert Muratore organized the tour over the past few months. 

Mr. Muratore welcomed them to his engineering class, where the visitors got to hear about some of the projects Bronx Science had been working on. Among other things, the work involved hammerhead sharks and a tracking device for motion in 3D.

The tracking device is aimed at helping detect health information about fetuses during an ultrasound without disclosing the sex of the baby. The idea is to prevent abortions based on fetuses’ gender in some countries. 

Students from the AMAL group have also been looking at ways to solve various medical issues.

Eleventh-grade student Anael Fukson, from Safed, Israel, came up with the idea of sterile stickers for stethoscopes to prevent germ and bacteria propagation that unsterilized stethoscopes enable.

“It’s very thin, it’s sterilized, it does not stand in the way of a doctor listening to the heartbeat, and after he’s done, he just peels it off and uses a next one. It’s very simple. But that product doesn’t exist yet; no one thought of it,” Mr, Neuman explained.

Student Rotem Bukris and his team researched a way to help dialysis patients by creating an app in which can look up all the dialysis centers and organize trips in ways they couldn’t do before.

“It’s extremely important, otherwise a person who does dialysis cannot go on vacation,” Mr, Neuman added.

The decision for this one-week visit to American high schools was spurred by the intention to tell the AMAL group’s story and for students to meet their counterparts, according to Mr. Neuman. He added they are exploring the possibility of working on joint projects in the future. 

Lastly, Mr. Neuman said he was hoping to positive things from Israel, because he feels “people think about terror” whenever they mention his home country and he wants that to change.

“There is so much more,” Mr. Neuman said.