Six Students Named Semifinalists in 2013 Intel Science Talent Search, Most in California Second Year in a Row

The Society for Science and the Public announced Wednesday that six Harker students have been named semifinalists in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, the most of any school in California.

The semifinalists, all grade 12, are Paulomi Bhattacharya (“A Novel AAA-ATPase p97/VCP Inhibitor Lead for Multiple Myeloma by Fragment-Based Drug Design: A Computational Binding Model and NMR/SPR-Based Validation”), Deniz Celik (“Computation of the Cell Phone-Induced SAR Distribution in a 3D Multi-Layered Model of the Human Head/Brain using Finite Element Analysis”), Jenny Chen (“RNAi of Rec12 in Schizosaccharomyces pombe: The Effect of Meiotic Recombination Inhibition on Fungicide Resistance”), who performed all of her research at Harker, Andrew Luo (“The Kinematics of Andromeda’s Diffuse Ionized Gas Disk”), Payal Modi (“Understanding the Chemical Inhomogeneities in Globular Clusters: Examining M4 and M5 for Trends in Elemental Abundances”) and Ashvin Swaminathan (“Surreal Analysis: An Analogue of Real Analysis for Surreal Numbers”).

A total of 26 students submitted projects for this year’s contest, each student spending countless hours doing research, writing and refining in preparation, with much help and encouragement from their mentor teachers in Harker’s science department.

“We could not be more proud that our students were recognized for the culminating efforts of their entire research process,” said Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “The process reflects so much of who we strive to be – our students putting forth great efforts to deeply learn about and understand a topic they are truly interested in.”

The semifinalists each received a $1,000 prize and a chance to head to Washington, D.C., for the final stages of the contest, the winner of which will receive $100,000. More information about the semifinalists will appear on Society for Science’s Facebook page in the coming weeks. The finalists will be announced Jan. 23.

January 9, 2013Tags: Featured Story, Research, Science, topresearch, topscience