  The MiniBooNE collaboration found evidence for the existence of sterile
neutrinos, at a mass scale comparable to the active left-handed neutrinos.
While sterile neutrinos arise naturally in large volume string scenarios, they
are more difficult to accommodate in heterotic-string derived models that
reproduce the GUT embedding of the Standard Model particles. Sterile neutrinos
in heterotic-string models imply the existence of an additional Abelian gauge
symmetry at low scales, possibly within reach of contemporary colliders. I
discuss the construction of string derived Z' models that utilise the
spinor-vector duality to guarantee that the extra $U(1)_{Z^\prime}$ symmetry
can remain unbroken down to low scales.
