Last weekend, the Harker Research Symposium welcomed attendees to the upper school campus for the first time since 2019. This annual celebration of the sciences, organized by the students of Women in STEM, invites the Harker community to view presentations and hear talks by Harker students and experts in a variety of fields, as well as get a glance at the exciting innovations on the horizon.
In her morning welcome address, science department chair and symposium founder Anita Chetty remarked that more than 60 poster presentations were being given by Harker middle and upper school students, a new record for the event. Attendees spent much of the day perusing the spaces in the athletic center and Rothschild Performing Arts Center where the presentations were being hosted.
The theme of this year’s symposium, “STEM Will Save Us,” dealt with the many ways that STEM disciplines are responding to current and upcoming challenges. Kamini Varma, VP of genetic testing solutions R&D at Thermo Fisher, was the first morning keynote speaker. Her talk, titled “The COVID-19 Diaries,” covered her experience during the COVID-19 pandemic working in molecular diagnostics. It was a project that began not long after shelter-in-place orders were enacted, which Varma described as feeling like a diary or book. “I started to put together the COVID-19 diaries actually in April of 2020, when I was asked to present a talk, she said. “I had no clue that two years later, we would still be adding new chapters.”
Artificial intelligence was a major topic at this symposium, with Helm.ai demonstrating its self-driving software outside Nichols Hall for much of the day, while Harker’s AI Club gave a presentation on ethical and unethical uses of AI in the present and beyond. Also discussing this topic was the second morning keynote speaker, Yanbing Li, senior VP of engineering at Aurora, developers of the Aurora Driver self-driving system that has vehicles in testing in the Bay Area, Pittsburgh and Dallas. “Self-driving technology has been the pursuit of our generation,” she said. “It always feels so close, but it also feels still far away.” Li’s presentation covered the ways Aurora’s technology is addressing safety concerns while also bringing self-driving technology closer to being a fully realized commercial product.
At a special alumni panel, Steven Botte ‘82, Ashley Morishige ‘07 (via Zoom), Amy Rorabaugh ‘10, Simar Bajaj ‘20, Daniza Rodriguez ‘13, Jasmine Wiese ‘20 and Allison Sommers ’21 covered important topics in diversity, equity and inclusion, including changes that must be made in corporate culture to increase diversity, how the Harker community helped and supported them in affirming their identities and what improvements the community can make for a more equitable environment. Each of the panelists were given the opportunity to talk at length about their unique experiences and how to approach conversations about race, sexuality and gender identity.
Senan Ebrahim ’08 and Hassaan Ebrahim ’11, this year’s alumni keynote speakers, gave a presentation on their journey to co-founding Hikma Health, a nonprofit that provides free health data systems to organizations providing health care to refugees. Their path included partnerships with groups around the world and engaging with their network to find people who could help build the technology. The primary goal of Hikma Health is to provide readily accessible and up-to-date information to clinicians so that they can offer refugees “the kind of personalized care that they truly deserve as compared to what we had been observing routinely on the ground,” Senan said.
Throughout the day, guests visited the exhibitor area where companies including Google, Nvidia and Microsoft demonstrated some of their products. They also made their way to the Nichols Hall rotunda, where several stations of fun activities were set up for the younger science enthusiasts in attendance.
The first afternoon keynote speaker was Hari Mix, assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Santa Clara University and an experienced climber with a total of five months on Mt. Everest. Mix surveyed the various environmental, social and economic changes that have been brought to the area around Mt. Everest, as well as possible solutions to the problems posed by human waste and climate change, including those that have affected the people indigenous to the area of Nepal where the mountain stands. Mix, whose current goal is to reach the summit of Mt. Everest without the assistance of supplemental oxygen, advised the students in the audience to learn to appreciate the journey. “My lesson for The Harker School students today is to really focus on the process more than the achievement or the outcome,” he said.
Speaking last for the day was Upendra Mardikar, chief security officer at Snap Finance, who advised guests on how to be “Cyber Smart,” summarizing the different types of security risks presented by the growing presence of smart devices in our daily lives. These include threats from online predators, cyberbullying and the acquisition and sale of personal information. He also discussed some proper and improper ways to respond to these risks. Despite the many threats people should be cognizant of, Mardikar advised caution, not panic. “The idea is not to scare you,” he said. “Don’t be scared, just be careful.”
Audrey Kwong ’07, a Harker Conservatory graduate who currently works as artistic operations manager for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, has been producing virtual concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I score call for cameras during the filming itself, and then work with a video editor to produce the videos themselves once we get into post-production,” she said. Her latest project is a performance of Edward Elgar’s “Sea Pictures,” Jake Heggie’s “The Work at Hand” and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and cellist Elizabeth Chung. It is available to purchase at the SLSO website.
At last month’s upper school winter choral concert, women’s vocal group Cantilena was joined by three Harker alumnae who are now faculty members. Upper school journalism teacher Whitney Huang ’08, upper school English teacher Bridget Nixon ’12 and middle school science teacher Kathy Peng ’05 – all former Cantilena members – gathered onstage with the current Cantilena lineup to perform Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim’s “Eatnemen Vuelie.” They also sang “Truth” by Andrea Ramsay as a trio.
The collaboration was the idea of music teacher Susan Nace, who reached out to the three alumnae at the beginning of the school year. They began rehearsing once a week in October, and even though they were all from different graduating classes, greatly enjoyed the experience of working on music together. “Although I didn’t necessarily know all the other alumni at the time while I was at Harker, because I’m a lifer I’ve crossed paths with many Cantilena alums,” said Huang, who was involved with performing arts throughout her student life at Harker and currently sings with two local choral groups. “Being back in the same classroom … really brings back memories of what Cantilena used to be like.”
The concert presented Nixon with an opportunity to perform again, which she had not done much of in recent years due to being focused on her teaching career. “I like getting to sing again, and we all have this shared experience of being part of Cantilena, which is pretty unique,” said Nixon, who started singing as a middle school student. “Susan has been generous with her time and expertise, and I’m grateful that she has given us this opportunity to sing together.”
Peng, who became a member of Cantilena the same year Nace formed the group and sang for several years after graduating from Harker, described the experience of being directed by her former teacher as “kind of surreal,” adding that she was honored to have been asked to be part of the concert. “It is a testament to the impact that Ms. Nace had on me and her other students that we would feel drawn to sing together again, after all these years, and under the circumstances of the pandemic,” she said.
The latest article by Jacob Bongers ’07, “Assembling the Dead,” was recently published in the archaeological journal “Antiquity.” The subject of the article is the 192 human spines recently uncovered in Peru’s Chincha Valley, which represent a method of treating the deceased previously unknown to the area.
The vertebrae were found attached to posts in indigenous graves called “chullpas,” and date back to the period during which colonizers from Europe had been in the region, which coincided with disease and famine killing much of the local population, said Bongers, a senior research associate at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom. Previously, he documented the looting of graves in the Chincha Valley, which was also rampant in the colonial period due to the gold and silver contained within them, as well as the colonial practice of wiping out indigenous religious practices and customs. As such, the method of placing the spines on posts, the research suggests, may have been a means to repair the damage caused to the remains by the looting.
Bongers’ research has so far garnered coverage from CNN, The Guardian, Science, Nature, India Today and dozens more outlets. He was also interviewed for the Feb. 3 episode of NPR’s “The World.” His interview starts at 39 minutes and 40 seconds.
In early January, the Class of 2020 gathered at the Hayes Mansion in San Jose for a special celebration that brought together hundreds of alumni and their loved ones to reflect on and honor their time as Harker students.
Safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of the 2020 graduation exercises, a heartbreaking end to a tumultuous year.
“It’s fun to see everyone again,” said 2020 graduate Anthony Shing. “I was bummed out that we didn’t have graduation and I’m happy that we were able to meet again. It was a great event.”
During the event, attendees viewed each graduate’s class collages, watched a special recap video of their years at Harker and heard speeches by their classmates. “It felt like I was still in high school. It was nice seeing everyone,” said Simren Gupta ’20.
The event was also a chance for the families of the graduates to celebrate and reminisce. “The Class of 2020 deserved such a nice sendoff, even one-and-a-half years later,” said Julie Buckly, mother of 2020 graduate Jeffrey Fung. “I think the students truly enjoyed seeing each other and it was fun to reconnect with parents as well.”
On Tuesday, Feb 1, at 7:30 p.m., Wajahat Ali MS ’94 will appear in a livestreamed conversation with author Dave Eggers (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”). The discussion will cover Ali’s new memoir, “Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American,” which contains stories about his life as a Muslim Pakistani-American. In addition to being a recently published author, Ali is also a columnist for The Daily Beast and has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post.
Digital tickets for this event are available through City Box Office.
Last month, Amelia Huchley ’19 was featured in a story by The Student Life, the newspaper of the Claremont Colleges, which covered her recent win in the Claremont Concert Orchestra’s Concerto Competition. She is the first vocalist in more than a decade to win.
Huchley, who graduated from the Harker Conservatory with a musical theater certificate and now attends Scripps College, told The Student Life about pursuing a career in music and the difficulty of making a living as a professional singer.
“At a lot of turns, I do get a lot of people saying to me, ‘You know how hard it is to make this work, right?’ And I do,” she said. “But on the other hand, I feel like I’m learning, and I’m making progress with my voice, and obviously some people do become professional opera singers. It’s not like it’s never going to happen. … I know it’s going to be really difficult. I do feel like I owe it to myself to try it and see if I can do it.”
She also discussed her love of singing and why she finds performing live so fulfilling.
“Even if you get up and do the exact same performance the next day, even if the performance that you did was recorded, it’s never going to happen exactly that way again, and that is really freeing.”
See the full story for more of Huchley’s thoughts on music and performance.
On Dec. 2, Shikha Mittal ’05 spoke to middle school students via Zoom about her path to becoming a lawyer. Starting out as a finance major at Santa Clara University, she decided to lean into her love of debate and negotiation and go into law. “I realized pretty early on in my college years that law was an area that might be a good career fit for me.” She ended up in the tech industry as an in-house lawyer at a Bay Area startup, and currently works at Databricks, an enterprise software company.
While discussing the rigors of law school, she recalled long study sessions for exams and preparing for the bar exam, which she described as “one of the hardest exams you’ll ever take in your life.” However, she advised that those factors shouldn’t dissuade students from seeking a career in law. “If you feel like you are interested in law and you want that to be your career, I wouldn’t say law school should be a detractor,” she said.
Mittal also talked about the differences between being an outside counsel lawyer, who works at a firm that is hired by companies, and an in-house lawyer, who is an employee of the company. She said that she has enjoyed the work-life balance as an in-house lawyer, as well as other perks of being an employee where she works.
Last week, CareerConnect, Harker’s student-run networking and career preparation program, led a leadership workshop featuring Helen Zhu ’21, who discussed journalism leadership and clubs at Harker, and Avi Gulati ‘20, who talked about the student council and volunteering in high school. Both alumni shared their experiences in finding their passions in high school, experiencing new classes and clubs, and being involved in student leadership.
Claire Cheng, a freshman who attended the session said, “I think that the event was very interesting, because I learned how two successful Harker students were able to navigate their way through high school and obtain leadership positions even in college.”
The workshop was intended to help guide grade 9 students to explore new opportunities, electives and extracurriculars before they settle. Organizers strove to make the experience memorable for the freshmen and sophomores who attended, but also the alumni speakers. “Even though I was halfway across the country from the upper school campus, it was really heartwarming to be able to see the freshman and sophomores in the classrooms through the Zoom screen,” Zhu said. “I was so glad to be able to give back to the Harker community and I really hope the attendees learned something new!”
On Oct. 27, CareerConnect brought nine students on a day trip to Constellation Research’s three-day Connected Enterprise business conference, held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Half Moon Bay, to help them better understand what is currently happening in the business world as well as what is predicted to happen in the future. The participants heard from many highly qualified speakers, many of whom are executives in Fortune 500 companies including Amazon and Salesforce. The students learned about the applications of technology and business models in various industries.
One of the notable speakers was Colin Bryer, a former executive at Amazon as well as the author of “Working Backwards,” which provides an inside perspective on the methodology and culture of Amazon. He discussed his experiences working closely with Jeff Bezos and how businesses like Amazon plan for the long term. Another was Geeta Nayyar, the executive medical director at Salesforce, who described the technological changes in the medical industry as a result of COVID-19.
Overall, the trip was a success and provided inspiration for students interested in business. When asked what he wanted the students to gain from Connected Enterprise, R “Ray” Wang, Constellation’s founder and CEO, explained that he wished for all the students to “see what trends are happening and meet people.” He further elaborated that everyone at the conference was approachable and happy to give advice to the students. Sophomore Claire Miao, reflecting on the benefits of the event, commented, “I thought it was a great experience to meet industry professionals that are at the top of their industry. All of the talks were great, and everyone had a topic to listen to that they were interested in. I also had so much fun at the hotel to see the views.”
The trip proved to be a valuable experience for the attendees, with the nine Harker students networking with new people and gaining a more comprehensive understanding of how the business world works.
An article published on Forbes.com last week featured Surbhi Sarna ’03, who was recently named startup accelerator Y Combinator’s first ever health and biotech partner. Sarna is the founder and former CEO of nVision Medical, which sought to create medical devices that could expedite the detection and therefore the treatment of ovarian cancer. The Mountain View-based Y Combinator, a highly successful tech startup accelerator, has helped launch companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Dropbox and Twitch.
According to the article, the move to make Sarna a partner was in part motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic. “Sarna’s mission is straightforward: to help deepen and standardize YC’s playbook when it comes to bio and life sciences participants, all while supporting other entrepreneurs who may not fit the traditional biotech VC funding pipeline mold,” author Alex Konrad writes. Her strategy will be to take a more science-based approach different from that of Y Combinator’s historical evaluation of software companies, speaking with physicians and investigating the science that goes into their documentation.