Flash Feature: PHS's research program

On December 1, research teachers James Smirk, Jennifer Smolyn, and Insu Yi will release applications to the two-year research program, which consists of two elective classes at PHS that allow students to learn how to research, create and conduct a project, and compete and publish in various competitions and journals.

In order to apply, prospective students must submit a short document summarizing their research interests, ask a teacher for a letter of recommendation, and complete a problem solving task in groups. First year students enroll in research methods, where they learn how to read scientific papers and complete the year with a grant-writing project that details the significance of their project and their procedure for carrying it out. Second year students enroll in research applications accelerated, where they work with a mentor to collect data and write a research paper.

James Smirk, one of the research teachers along with Jennifer Smolyn and Insu Yi, believes that the program is valuable because of the problem-solving skills and persistence students develop.

“I think one of the unique things about research is [that] you’re going to run into ... difficulties, and you really have to think deeply and meaningfully to try to overcome them to get to where you want to go. I think that has a lot of value outside of the academic sphere,” said Smirk.

Eleanor Nayden

On October 16, 2025, Eleanor Nayden ’26 published her 19-page research paper “Impact of Political Allegiance on H-1B Visa Acceptances to the US: An Analysis of the Relationship Between UNGA Voting Alignment and H-1B Visa Acceptances to the United States” in the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) — a culmination of her three years in the PHS Research Program.

Nayden’s research analyzes the relation between countries’ political alignment to the United States and the acceptance rates for a country’s H1B visa applicants. Nayden was inspired to pursue this topic because while it combined her interests in economics and political science, it also held personal significance for her.

“[The] entire intention with [my] research is to combine all my passions and all my areas of interest. I am an entrepreneur, I founded a nonprofit and a socially-conscious business, and my whole idea is to use entrepreneurship for social impact,” said Nayden. “[Because] my parents are immigrants, I see the influence of immigrants, not only when I read research and literature, but also through the impact that they amake to the U.S. economy.”

In addition to the mentorship she received from Louis Maiden, an empirical researcher at Harvard Business School, who guided her on research methodology and data organization methods, Nayden also credits the PHS research program for making her project possible.

“For my first year, [I] had Ms. Katz before she was the science department supervisor. I was one to ask so many questions and she answered all of them. Mr. Yi has been such a help ... he's very well regarded in the research world, so he's helped me through publication and applying to different journals and conferences ... I had Smirk junior year. He helped me start Stata [and] get funding for [it].”

Nayden looks forward to soon publishing her paper in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, and continuing research in college

Angelica Hu

Inspired by reading about sunscreen created from pineapples, Angelica Hu ’27 is researching plant-based sunscreen through the PHS Research Program.

“These two compounds I'm looking at, bromelain and quercetin ... one's a protein, the other one is [basically] a plant pigment, haven't really been researched together ... I want to [do that],” said Hu. “It's going to have applications in more natural products, because sunscreens [overall] use chemical active ingredients, which can be harmful.”

Hu credits the introductory class of the program, Research Methods, in helping her distill her many interests into her current research topic. The summer assignment for incoming research students is to create an annotated bibliography in which they read articles about their topic of interest.

“[Ms. Smolyn’s] great at giving you the resources [and] the basics ... and then it's for you to kind of decide on what you want to do. There aren't many restrictions on the assignments. For example, for the [annotated bibliography summer assignment], you [can] do research on anything that you want,” said Hu.

Hu is currently taking Research Applications Accelerated with Dr. Insu Yi. The class is much more self guided than Research Methods, which Hu says is helpful because it allows her to focus on her own personal project.

“I scan [to see] if my orders have come in yet. I'm working on my methodology [right now] — I'm doing research on the equipment I'm going to use. I also like to chat with my classmates: I chat with my partner about progress [and] what we're going to do. I also [work on] emailing my mentees or emailing my mentors,” said Hu.

In addition to the analytical skills she learned, Hu also finds research beneficial for pursuing her passions. “You get to learn how to make graphs from really complex data sets. You also get to explore [what] you're interested in [for] your career ... It helps you with communication [too] by contacting others. It's also ... your project. You do what you want to do.”

Joanna Hou

Joanna Hou ’26 combined her interests in machine learning and cell behavior in her research project, which predicts whether certain drugs used to target age-related diseases can eliminate senescent cells that release harmful chemicals.

“These anti-aging compounds are called senolytics, and what they do in the body is that they selectively target and then eliminate senescent cells ... [that] spread [bad] chemicals ... especially because senescent cells are tied to age related diseases such as Alzheimer’s [and] arthritis,” said Hou. “I took the data set that the authors of the paper compiled ... and I trained a ... machine learning model.”

Hou credits her mentor Lie Xie, a computer science professor at Northeastern University, for helping her with the modeling aspect of her research.

“The data set that I used from the authors was very imbalanced, meaning that it didn’t have a lot of actual drugs that were senolytics, because it’s still a pretty new field ... machine learning models generally require larger, larger amounts of data [and] I didn’t have a lot of senolytic data to train my model on. But eventually, I just looked around ... and I used another training technique,” said Hou.

Hou also credits the PHS Research Program for introducing her to the fundamentals of research.

“I was introduced to ... how to read a study, how to analyze data, and how to write grant proposals. [And] after that we figured out what we wanted to do, and we would ... do that in [our] junior and senior years,” said Hou.

Though Hou’s research has taken her deep into the intersection of technology and biology, she emphasized that innate talent for science is not the key to success.

“I think what’s most important in research isn’t really ... natural talent for science, it’s how well you work with other people, how well you communicate with your mentors, and also how much you want to do the project, because I think it’s about your passion,” said Hou. “[And] with my own project ... there were problems where my model just wouldn’t work ... but you just keep pushin