Kudos to inspiring young social entrepreneur Suraya Shivji, grade 12, who created an altruistic app to raise money to help African orphans become self-sufficient.
Shivji taught herself to program iPhone gaming apps and get them posted on Apple’s app store. She is now using them, along with a crowd-funding campaign she began this year on her website, Rizikitoto, as a source of revenue for the needy orphans.
The website has generated about $1,300 for the children at a Ugandan orphanage, Bright Futures Home, with money from each app designated for a particular child. The orphanage program is further supported by Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit group that seeks to close the gender gap in technology and engineering.
This story is a continuation of “Harker Research: Profiles in Perseverance,” a story that appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly highlighting scientific research being performed by Harker students. Read on to find out more about these students’ fascinating projects and exciting discoveries!
Shikhar Dixit, Grade 12
Shikhar Dixit’s interest in STEM research led him to perform pharmaceutical research at biotech company Cellworks last year. He later discovered that he enjoyed immunology. “I find immunology intriguing because of the interesting intricacies involved,” he said. “When reading research about how the immune system relates to the eye, I became even more interested in pursuing this project.”
For his project, “Immunomodulation by Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line ARPE-19,” Dixit was mentored by Dr. Andrew W. Taylor at Boston University Medical Center. “My experience … in the lab environment dealing with fascinating lab equipment and cell cultures while interacting with many Ph.D. and medical students has been the most exciting part of the research,” he said.
Over the course of his research, Dixit found that “there are specific tissues in the body such as the eyes, brain, central nervous system and testes that suppress inflammation in a phenomenon known as immune privilege.”
Matthew Huang, Grade 12
Matthew Huang’s “interest and passion in physics” led him to his research project of quarks and gluons. “I’ve always had a curiosity for how the universe worked at a fundamental level, and researching about quarks and gluons is the perfect subject,” he said.
His project, “Quarks and Gluons in Spacetime: BiCGSTAB Implementation of Lattice QCD on Intel Xeon Phi Coprocessor,” sought to find “a more efficient way to carry out lattice QCD processes, which determine the interactions between quarks and gluons.” One of the most fascinating things he learned was that “you can never separate a pair of quarks, no matter how much energy you put in. Empty space is not actually empty, but filled with oscillating energy fields comprised of gluons.”
Huang’s mentor, William Detmold of MIT, “guided me throughout the entire project and remained supportive through difficulties.”
Leeza Kuo, Grade 12
Leeza Kuo, grade 12, chose stem cells as the subject of her research project, “Embryonic stem cell markers KLf4 and SSEA1 expressed as a result of acute-liver damage,” because of the possible health benefits they offer. “I love to help others and researching stem cells could lead to new regenerative health procedures that could help many people,” she said. “Stem cells are very popular field of research today partially because of the potential it could have on regenerative medicine.”
Being in the research program at Harker afforded Kuo opportunities she may not have had otherwise. “Thanks to [Harker’s] strong science program, I was able to complete my research project using methods including electrophoresis and polymerase chain reaction that are not readily available at most other schools,” she noted.
The extra help sessions she attended at school also helped her understand material more clearly, as it allowed her to review topics with her teachers and ask more pointed questions. “Harker teachers are always extremely supportive and encouraging in their student’s work because of the small faculty to student ratio,” Kuo said. “All my teachers know me by name along with my personality and character.”
What excited Kuo most about her research was the implications it may have for changing how – and how long – people live: “Induced pluripotent stem cells could be the key to reversing aging and repairing genetic mutations by implanting new tissues, becoming the non-fictional fountain of youth.”
Ankita Pannu, Grade 12
Ankita Pannu’s project, “Mining online cancer support groups: improving healthcare through social data,” was special to her for a variety of reasons, but one stands out. “I wanted to do this project after a member in my family was diagnosed with thyroid cancer,” she recalled. “I spent a lot of time in thyroid cancer support groups and I realized that they are really hard to navigate, so I decided to use my knowledge of computer science to solve this problem.”
Pannu’s hope was to make this particular online support group easier to navigate so that thyroid cancer patients will have an easier time finding helpful materials. “I hoped to be able to summarize and categorize threads so that users would be able to easily determine whether it would be valuable for them to read,” she said. “I also tried to find correlations between symptoms and treatments based on what people were discussing.”
In addition to having success in these areas, she said it gave her some ideas for future research she hopes to pursue. The project also gave her a chance to combine her love of computer science and linguistics into a single project.
“I have always been interested in computer science and especially the intersection of linguistics and CS to find meaning in human language,” she said. “It is so fascinating to me that computers are becoming more intelligent systems and we can use different algorithms to make sense out of natural language.”
Archana Podury, Grade 12
Hematology was new for Archana Podury, grade 12, who is working with Stanford University’s Dr. Anu Parla while researching uses for the novel drug CX-5641 for her project, “Targeting Myelodisplasia in 5q- Syndrome Using Novel Drug CX-5641.” Podury has found Dr. Narla to “incredibly helpful.
“When I was becoming familiar with the pathways and the properties of blood cells that were involved with the drug, she decided to hold weekly lectures in her office to teach me segments of confusing material and answer any questions I had.”
Shadowing Narla at a hematology clinic at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Podury had the opportunity to “meet actual patients, study patient samples and learn about blood smears. She always works to contextualize her research and works very closely with her patients, which reinforced to me that research isn’t just a distanced study that happens in a lab, it has actual application for real people.”
Under Narla’s mentorship, Podury, has been considered a real member of the team at the lab. “Since I’m still working in the lab during the school year, she organizes monthly lab meetings discussing everyone’s projects and makes sure I can make it to the meetings,” Podury said. “I’m very thankful to have had her as a mentor; she has helped me so much throughout the process.”
Podury hopes that her work at the lab will reveal that “[CX-5641] can selectively target defective 5q- cells in not just an A549 model, but also in CD34 blood cells and in patient samples. It’s a long way to go, but I’m excited to keep working.”
Because she is not yet 18, Podury is not able to work with core blood, but watching her colleagues process core blood has been one of the most exciting parts of her research. She has also been introduced to techniques that she had not been familiar with previously. “I learned about viral transfections and knocking down segments of DNA using lentivirus, which was especially interesting because we learned about lentivirus in AP Bio, but I never knew something so dangerous could be used so effectively in research,” she said.
Podury’s experience with research began in middle school through the Harker Research Club. Prior to her work at Stanford, she worked at Harker’s Open Lab. “I was able to see many sides of research that I didn’t know about before, like how important the stage of ordering materials is, how unpredictable results can be even when they’re planned very precisely, and how to analyze and respond to errors in data,” she said. “Harker lets us access so many resources, and before working in open lab, I honestly had no idea that the lab had so much high quality equipment that was available to students. It’s really a privilege.”
Sahana Rangarajan, Grade 12
“I wanted to spend my summer at a research internship to gain the experience necessary to conduct research in college,” said senior Sahana Rangarajan.
Her project, “Tracking parallel mutation trajectories conferring increased resistance to HIV-RT inhibitors,” was the result of a newfound interest in biology and programming. “Thus, bioinformatics seemed a perfect field to try research in,” she said.
The goal of the research was to improve ways of predicting how HIV develops mutations that resist drug treatment. In the process, the research team “used a new method that yielded promising results,” Rangarajan said. Interestingly, she added, “there was no lab based component, but learning about the biology behind HIV was necessary for me to understand what I was doing.”
Nikash Sankar, Grade 12
During his work as a volunteer at a dementia care facility, senior Nikash Shankar witnessed the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease firsthand, and wanted to help. “As I was investigating various herbal remedies for Alzheimer’s, I came across curcumin, a spice that is commonly used in Asian cooking,” he said. “Being familiar with the spice, I became interested in its effects on Alzheimer’s disease and possible methods of improving its efficacy.”
Researching further, Shankar discovered he could increase curcumin’s ability to reduce toxicity caused by Alzheimer’s through “encapsulation of curcumin into polymeric nanoparticles.”
Adding to the field of Alzheimer’s research was the most exciting part of his project, titled “A Potential Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease: Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability.” “Everything we find through our research (that is novel) is something that no one has ever found before and discovering or even validating a scientific finding as a high school student is a rare opportunity,” he said.
Science teachers Chris Spenner, Anita Chetty and other Harker faculty members provided helpful feedback to Sankar as he was creating his paper.
Aside from having a unique research opportunity, Shankar also had the rare chance to use a scanning electron microscope. “SEM’s are incredibly expensive and only very few exist in California,” he said.
Venkat Sankar, Grade 10
Sophomore Venkat Sankar’s interest in environmental science led him to research the environmental impact of the proposed billion-dollar Panoche Valley Solar Farm, which would be constructed in central California’s Panoche Valley if approved.
Sankar said he was “[concerned] about the potential impact of the Panoche [Valley] Solar Farm project on the rare and endangered wildlife in the area.” The main goal of his project, ‘Managing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Endangered Species: A Stochastic Simulation Approach Based on Population Viability Analysis,’ was to use computer simulations that would analyze available information and use it to simulate a system, in hopes of coming up with “a detailed assessments of the impact of infrastructure projects on endangered wildlife.”
He received help from middle school science teacher Daniel Sommer, who offered advice and introduced Sankar to an expert in environmental sciences. Upper school science teacher Jeff Sutton also provided input on the final paper.
“It has been validated using a real-life case study in California,” Sankar said of his project. “It is broadly applicable to a range of environmental impact studies around the world.”
Madelyn Wang, Grade 12
After taking Harker’s research methods class in grade 10, Madelyn Wang, now grade 12, became interesting in pursuing scientific research. This past summer, she enrolled at UC Davis’ Young Scholars Program , where she worked on developing a blot procedure for detecting trace amounts of protein in tissue samples with her mentor, Dr. Aldrin Gomes. “I also studied the protein expression levels of GSTM1, an antioxidant enzyme, and looked at if those levels were altered in diabetic and non-diabetic mice,” she said. He project is titled “Optimized Western blotting allows for detection of Glutathione S-Transferase Mu 1 levels in hearts from type I diabetic Akita mice and wild-type mice.”
Overall, Wang said her time spent in the Young Scholars Program “was a great way to get hands-on experience in the lab while living in the dorms and getting a college experience.”
Serena Wang, Grade 12
“I have always been curious and eager to try new things,” said senior Serena Wang of her project, “Coronary Artery Calcification and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in South Asians.” “This project mainly required me to develop my abilities to do statistical analysis, which I had never focused on before.”
Wang drew on her background in computer science to analyze data she had gathered about cardiovascular disease. “Heart disease is a common illness, and I wanted to improve current methods of predicting cardiovascular disease risk,” she said.
Mentored by Ashish Mathur of the South Asian Heart Center at El Camino Hospital, Wang utilized the resources made available to her to identify a specific area of study. “I wish to find a better way to determine cardiovascular disease risk for the South Asian population, which suffers from a significantly higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease than other ethnicities,” she said.
The skills Wang learned at Harker were key to helping her gain a greater understanding of the topic. “After learning so much at school, I am finally able to use the theoretical concepts I learned in school to do novel research,” she said. “The potential effects of my results could help the South Asian Heart Center better predict cardiovascular disease risk and thus more effectively prevent development of the disease.”
Wang’s research gave her the opportunity to pick up new skills, including the use of statistical analysis software. “With such specific syntax and so many different commands, the software was challenging to learn to use efficiently, but now I am experienced enough to even teach a new student researcher how to use the application.”
Samyukta Yagati, Grade 12
During her freshman year, Samyukta Yagati, who has been doing research projects since grade 7, became interested in computer science, a subject she has pursued actively ever since. “Research is a lot of fun for me,” she said. “I enjoy the process, the discovery, the challenge, applying things I’ve learned in class to real-life problems.”
Her project, “Optimizing Segmentation Performance to Improve Diagnosis of Breast Lesions,” gave her the opportunity to explore both computer science and biology, a topic she had recently become enamored with. “I have loved computer science since freshman year, and I’ve been interested in bio. That interest intensified after bio in junior year,” she recalled.
In her research, Yagati hoped to improve an algorithm that is used to diagnose patients with breast lesions. “Improving the results/increasing automation of the process can really help effectiveness and usability of the program in clinics, hopefully improving patient experience and treatment,” she said.
While researching for the project, Yagati learned some interesting things about medical research: “Knowing information as simple as whether the edge of a lesion … is spiky or not can give doctors a lot of information about malignancy!”
Michael Zhao, Grade 11
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, perhaps better known by the acronym ALS and the nickname Lou Gehrig’s disease, received a lot of attention this past summer due to the craze created by the Ice Bucket Challenge.
Junior Michael Zhao’s own research began after he read numerous articles on the topic. “Especially over the summer, with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, I felt like my research had a tangible impact and made the experience more interesting,” he said.
Zhao’s project, “A Yeast Functional Screen Elucidates Potential Mechanisms of C9ORF72 RAN Protein Toxicity in ALS Pathogenesis,” involved searching for genetic modifiers for RAN proteins. “RAN proteins, the focus of my research, were first identified in 2011,” he said. “Yet, three years later, we still know very little about the underlying mechanisms of RAN protein toxicity.”
Zhao worked with a mentor that he said was extremely helpful. “My mentor has taught me many techniques to perform experiments, he said. “Furthermore, he offered me an experience I could never have hoped to obtain elsewhere.” Working in a university lab was also a new and exciting experience, which offered many learning opportunities.
In addition, he received a lot of help from Harker science teachers in refining his project. “In particular, they were very helpful in reading over my paper and giving me feedback,” he said.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Numerous fall events sponsored by Harker’s DECA chapter and business and entrepreneurship department set the tone for an exciting year. Activities included the kickoff of the annual Stock Market Game (in which Harker is the reigning champion), DECA Month and the ambitious BEcon2014.
DECA started the year with a flurry of events designed to introduce the student body to its mission and goals, while also preparing for competition season. In November, the chapter coordinated numerous on-campus events in conjunction with DECA Month, an international DECA celebration.
An ice cream social, hosted by the DECA chapter in early November, gave students the chance to ask officers about the upcoming DECA year while enjoying a mouth-watering treat.
In mid-November, more than 60 Harker students attended Silicon Valley DECA’s Leadership and Competitive Excellence (LACE) Conference. This three-day event was targeted at underclassmen with limited experience in competitive DECA events. The keynotes were delivered by motivational speaker Scott Greenberg and Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and marketing professor at Stanford University’s School of Business. Events were created to be informative and welcoming, with hands-on workshops in the fields of hospitality, investment banking, fashion and venture capitalism. Sophia Luo, grade 11, said, “In my opinion, the best part of attending LACE is the networking opportunities that it provides. Students from all over the Silicon Valley who have the same interests in business congregate and exchange stories, memories and knowledge.”
DECA gives back
A large part of DECA’s charter focuses on giving back to community. During DECA Month, the chapter hosted events to raise money for and aware- ness of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Red Cross and organizations dedicated to ending world hunger.
The first of these events was the Nov. 12 Hoops and Scoops basketball game, which raised money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The game pitted faculty against students on the court, while DECA members sold ice cream on the sidelines. The raucous crowd watched as the faculty battled the freshmen in the first quarter, followed by the sophomores and the juniors. The faculty finally fell to the seniors in the final quarter, with a score of 72-59.
Then on Nov. 15, DECA members gathered to assemble more than 100 Red Cross disaster kits for families who homes were damaged by natural disasters.
The DECA chapter then paired with Students for Charitable Causes to organize a movie night to raise awareness of world hunger. The groups sold more than 60 tickets to the Nov. 21 premier of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” with proceeds from the event going to Second Harvest Food Bank.
Playing the market, staying connected
The 2014 season of The Stock Market Game is also in full swing, with Harker students and faculty working to create portfolios to outperform the S&P index. The national competition pits teams and individuals against each other, both at Harker and across the country. For the first 10 weeks of the competition, Harker had two to four teams in the top 25 in the Western region. Last year, three Harker teams finished in the top 25 in the Western region, a high standard that current competitors hope to match.
This year, the B.E. podcast series picks up where it left off last year by “gather[ing] influential people from the Harker community and beyond to share their experiences with students, parents and even the public,” explained Glenn Reddy, grade 12, founder of the series.
“The podcast team has been working to expand outside of the B.E. department” and recently put out a series of weekly podcasts leading up to the midterm elections, Reddy explained. The series included a number of thoughtful interviews with high-ranking officials, including U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (California’s 19th district) and U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (California’s 17th district). The final interview, released Nov. 17, featured Mike Wasserman, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Stay tuned, as the team plans to expand into more areas this year.
One of B.E.’s biggest returning programs is Career Connect, which includes a mentorship program, career panels and a professionalism program. Career Connect aims to prepare students not only land the careers they want once they graduate, but also to excel in them. To this end, the B.E. department organized a resume workshop led by Michelle Vitus, founder of Slate Advisers, a company dedicated to helping professionals manage career transitions. Laya Indukuri, grade 12, who helped organize the event, said she thought “hearing a professional talk about major do’s and don’ts really helped to give [the students] a big picture of what a resume should look like.”
Students, Speakers Shine at Inaugural BEcon2014
BEcon2014, the B.E. department’s largest event to date, was a daylong conference comprising multiple keynotes, student presentations and guided activities that explained the principles of business and economics. It was “essentially a research symposium [that] explored the marriage of economics and business,” summarized Juston Glass, head of the B.E. department.
The event gave B.E. students the ability to showcase their classroom efforts. The students worked early in the year to create advertising campaigns for products and companies of their choice, which were showcased during the first BEcon session.
Ran Abramitzky, associate professor of economics at Stanford, opened the day’s events in earnest. His keynote address focused on the economics of education. Abramitzky’s talk was based on his research, which emphasized the importance of education on economic situations for immigrants. Samuel Lepler, Harker economics teacher, praised Abramitzky’s discussion for being “both a great introduction to the economic way of thinking as well as an interesting investigation into a topic that most people take for granted. Namely, whether college is actually a good investment. It was both informative and inspirational!”
The mentor luncheon provided an informal atmosphere in which students could meet with their mentors to discuss their future careers as well as their mentors’ career accomplishments.
Perhaps the best-received session of the day was the sHarker Tank event, which paired the ingenuity of Harker’s students with the format of the popular TV show Shark Tank. Teams presented business proposals to a panel of judges. The winning product, a laser-guided device to provide superior feedback to blind users (a virtual “red cane”) was both philanthropic and entrepreneurial in nature.
Jeremy King, CTO of global e-commerce for Walmart Labs, closed out the day with his keynote, focused on his success in increasing Walmart’s global footprint. He used the success of Walmart Labs to highlight the overall industry themes involving the movement away from traditional brick and mortar stores to e-commerce.
In the first few months of the school year, the DECA chapter continued its work at Harker, while maintaining its national reputation as a top performer at competitions and conventions. Meanwhile the B.E. department put its best foot forward with the ambitious BEcon2014 event. In the coming months, Harker’s entrepreneurs surely will have more in store to keep students, teachers and parents engaged and active in the community.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
September Tournaments Yield TOC Bids
Harker debaters were busy in late September, earning impressive results at two events!
The debate team had a great weekend at the Greenhill Round Robin and Invitational in Dallas. Pranav Reddy, grade 12, was the first-place speaker in Lincoln- Douglas debate in both the round robin and the invitational. The round robin is for the top 16 Lincoln-Douglas debaters in the country, so a first place finish is quite an accomplishment. Reddy also made it to the quarterfinals of the invitational. Ayush Midha, grade 12 was the second place policy speaker at the invitational (out of 232 competitors). Midha and Panny Shan, grade 11, made it to the octofinals of the invitational. All three students earned one of the two required qualifying bids for the Tournament of Champions.
Nine Harker debaters traveled to New Haven, Conn., to compete at the Yale Debate Invitational. Alumni coaches Arjun Kumar ’14 and Aneesh Chona ’13 coached public forum debate and served as judges.
Sophomore Michael Tseitlin earned a bid to the prestigious Tournament of Champions by making it to the semi- final chamber in congressional debate.
Harker hosted the 15th annual Howard and Diana Nichols Invitational Debate Tournament on the last weekend of September. A total of 380 students from 26 California schools participated in the tournament, which was run primarily by Harker debate students. In addition to various debate competitions, the event included several workshops taught by Harker debate captains.
“These workshops were dreamed up by Harker captains years ago and have become something we are known for as our successful older students teach Harker and outside students who are new to debate,” said Harker debate teacher Carol Green.
The weekend also included a special novice public forum tournament for debaters in grades 6-8, in which 35 middle school students participated.
Grade 11 Debater Named to National Student Leadership Committee, Upper School Program Honored
On Oct. 13, Eesha Chona, grade 11, was selected to be a part of the National Speech & Debate Association’s Student Leadership Committee, which represents the needs of debate students and encourages student leaders to advocate for other association members. As a member of the committee, Chona will serve as a role model to other debate students, participate in monthly meetings and engage with social media outlets.
Additionally, the upper school’s speech and debate program was recognized for its extraordinary success by being named to the National Speech & Debate Association’s Pentagon Society, thereby making it one of the top 0.1 percent of high school speech and debate programs in the country, according to their press release. Harker earned this honor by receiving more than 500 honorary degrees during the 2013-14 school year. Harker ranked 15th overall out of 3,000 member schools nationwide.
Middle School Holds Intramural Tournament
On Oct. 30, 85 middle school students and their parents participated in the October Intramural Speech and Debate Tournament. Each student competed in three competitive rounds against other Harker students to practice and get a feel for what a competitive round is like. Parents and high school students volunteered as judges. The event was run in a timely fashion, with more than 50 total speech and debate rounds taking place on a Thursday evening.
Success Continues Through October
Harker debate students continued their successful year at a tournament held at the University of the Pacific in Stockton at the end of October. Andrew Tierno, grade 10, took second place in open dramatic interpretation, while Lisa Liu, grade 11, earned third place in open humorous interpretation.
Meanwhile, the team of David Jin, grade 11, and Alex Lam, grade 10, and the team of freshmen Derek Kuo and Justin Xie, both finished in the top eight of open public forum debate.
Earlier in the month, at the St. Mark’s School in Dallas, policy debaters Ayush Midha and Panny Shan reached the semifinal round, finishing third out of 76 teams. Midha was named 14th speaker in the tournament and, on the invitation of a group of debate coaches, gave a special speech at St. Mark’s. These results qualified Midha and Shan for the Tournament of Champions.
At a Lincoln-Douglas debate event held at Presentation High School, Pranav Reddy was named the first-place speaker in the round robin and invitational events, in addition to reaching the semifinal round of the invitational and qualifying for the Tournament of Champions. Karen Qi, grade 11, reached the quarterfinals of the invitational, placing her one step closer to qualifying for the Tournament of Champions.
Students Earn Accolades and TOC Spots in Public Forum
More than 30 Harker students attended the Presentation High School Public Forum Invitational held the weekend of Nov. 8. Eighteen upper school students competed in the varsity division while four upper school and eight middle school students competed in the novice division; three seniors came to the tournament to coach novices.
Two of Harker’s varsity teams made it into the Elite Eight, with one team debating its way to the final two, losing the final round on a 2-1 decision. Seniors Nikhil Kishore and Vamsi Gadiraju rocked their first tournament of the season as final-round participants and earned their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
Kishore and Gadiraju are the fifth Harker public forum team to earn half of their qualifying legs only two months into the season.
The top eight teams in elimination rounds included the duo known as “The Brothers Lin” – David Lin, grade 12, and his younger brother Jimmy Lin, grade 9.
Sorjo Banerjee, grade 11, was named as the top overall individual speaker at the tournament with five other Harker students being recognized in the top 15 overall.
Success in Minneapolis
Six middle school and 10 upper school students traveled to Apple Valley, Minn., in early November to compete at the MinneApple Debate Tournament. This is the first year Harker middle school students have competed at this high school varsity national invitational and everyone had a wonderful time!
Every team from Harker won at least one of their preliminary rounds, an especially notable accomplishment for the middle schoolers as they were the only grade 7 debaters in the pool of mostly high school juniors and seniors.
Eesha Chona and Joyce Huang, grade 10, were 33rd seed and missed elimination rounds by the speaker point tie-breaker. Juniors Suraj Jagadeesh and Nikhil Bopardikar went undefeated in preliminaries and lost a close match in the first elimination round. Bopardikar was also named seventh overall individual speaker out of more than 200 speakers in the varsity division!
Abhinav Ketineni and Jasmine Liu, both grade 11, also went undefeated in prelims. They lost in the Sweet 16 as did the team of Alex Lam and David Jin. Both teams earned their first of two qualifying legs to the Tournament of Champions. Ketineni was also the ninth overall individual speaker.
Sorjo Banerjee and sophomore Emaad Raghib represented Harker all the way to the Elite Eight, losing in the quarterfinal round. They also picked up their first leg to the Tournament of Champions.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Every year, dozens of Harker’s upper school students submit projects to the Intel Science Talent Search and Siemens Competition. These projects, often created during summer internships at university science labs, are the result of months of research, writing and refinement. This feature highlights just a fraction of the amazing work being performed by Harker students every year. To read more about the projects on page 29, please go to our Science Projects 2014 section in Harker News, or search “perseverance.”
Roshni Pankhaniya Grade 12
For her project, “Analyzing First-Trimester MicroRNA as a Marker for Assessing Adverse Pregnancy Risk,” senior Roshni Pankhaniya researched at Stanford University’s Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC). She was especially interested in immunology. “When looking for an area of research, I focused on finding professors targeting specific disorders/diseases,” she said. Her mentors, Xuhuai Ji and Holden T. Maecker, “helped me come up with the basic experimental design of the project and advised me on how to conduct the data analysis.”
Pankhaniya found her research internship by searching for projects that she found interesting and contacting the professors working on them. “I chose to work on this specific project because preeclampsia is a reproductive condition faced by approximately 8 percent of women worldwide, is the leading cause of maternal mortality and could not be detected prior to 10 weeks gestation, the latest time period for preventative therapy,” she said. Her goal was to come up with a way of detecting preeclampsia before 10 weeks gestation in order to find ways to treat it and thus lower the number of maternal deaths.
“It was great being able to work with experts in the field in such an advanced technical setting,” Pankhaniya said. “In addition to doing research, I was able to attend lectures given by Stanford and visiting professors, as well as talk to other professors in the department about their research.”
Despite being a high school student, Pankhaniya found the staff at HIMC to be welcoming and respectful. “It was amazing how eagerly they welcomed a high school student into the lab and never for a moment did I feel that I was ‘just’ a high school student, but rather was a member of the team,” she recalled.
Among her most exciting moments during her research was discovering with the team that “we could use maternal cell MicroRNA to detect risk for preeclampsia prior to 10 weeks gestation. Our findings are really interesting in that they suggest that maternal cell MicroRNA plays a greater role in fetal development than placental cell MicroRNA. We will look to understand why that is so in the future.
“Overall,” Panhkaniya said, “this was one of the most fulfilling and most memorable experiences of high school due to interactions I was able to have with experts in the field and the research experience I gained.”
David Lin Grade 12
Senior David Lin turned to cosmology for his project, “Physical Properties and Evolution of Gravitationally Bound Halo Structures in Cosmological Dark Matter Simulations.”
“I chose this area of research since it was an interesting intersection of physics, computer science and astronomy,” Lin said. His project concerned the characteristics of dark matter halos, which play a key role in the formation of galaxies. “This knowledge will be useful in predicting how dark matter behaves in nonvirialized regions of space and will supplement existing galaxy formation theories.”
Lin was in good company during his time researching at the University of California, Santa Cruz, being mentored by Dr. Joel Primack and postdoctoral researcher Miguel Rocha. “One of the most exciting parts of my research was being able to work under such accomplished faculty,” he said. “For instance, [Primack] pioneered the famous LCDM Theory, which explains how the universe evolved after the Big Bang.”
Harker faculty, including upper school science teachers Chris Spenner and Anita Chetty, were instrumental in helping Lin find the right opportunity. “Many of the faculty like Mr. Spenner and Ms. Chetty helped me find my internship opportunity and helped edit my research paper afterward,” he said.
One of the most interesting parts of Lin’s research was how the team measured dark matter. “Most matter in the universe is composed of dark matter, which doesn’t interact with light and is therefore difficult to measure,” he said. “As such, we use computer simulations to model this matter to find how the universe evolves over time.”
Cindy Liu Grade 12
Cindy Liu, grade 12, enjoyed the work she was doing in science classes, so a research internship seemed like a natural next step. “I’ve always liked doing labs and reading articles in science classes, and I thought research would be a good way to learn more about a particular topic in a different way, not just through textbooks and lectures,” she said.
For her project, “Characterizing Novel Binders as Tools for Understanding Chloride Transport Mechanisms,” she researched at Stanford University’s molecular and cellular physiology department as well as under the Stanford Institutes of Medicine Summer Research (SIMR) program.
Because she enjoyed learning about the workings of the human body and cellular function, the program was a good fit. “I’m also considering pursuing medicine or biomedical engineering in the future, so this project seemed like a good way to test my interest in these areas,” she said.
Her research involved two proteins that were potential inhibitors of CLC, “a chloride-proton antiporter that moves chloride and protons across membranes,” Liu said. “If they are shown to bind to and inhibit CLC, they can be further characterized in order to help gain greater understanding of CLC structure and function.”
Liu found the experience to be rewarding, with some neat surprises. “This was my first time doing actual wet lab research, so I loved being able to set up the experiments and collect the raw data myself instead of just analyzing someone else’s data,” she said. “Also, since my project was part of a larger program for high school students, I got to meet other students with similar interests and listen to various presentations from graduate students, doctors and researchers – even a Nobel Prize winner!”
The resources and support Liu found at Harker proved invaluable in helping her discover this opportunity. “Harker has provided so many resources, from general information on various research opportunities to internships students can apply for directly through Harker,” she said. “Harker research and science teachers are also very supportive of students’ research ideas and goals.”
Liu would like to continue her studies in this field, but said she is keeping an open mind. “I hope to do science research in college, especially in molecular and cellular physiology if I get the chance. But I’m also open to exploring and learning about other fields as well!”
Rahul Balakrishnan Grade 12
Senior Rahul Balakrishnan’s interest in computer science led him to the Science Internship Program (SIP) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied astronomy with mentor Angie Wolfgang, a graduate student. “I choose the astronomy field since it focuses on a broader application of computer science. I wanted to see programming at work outside of an office setting,” said Balakrishnan.
After seeing several Harker students complete successful internships at UC Santa Cruz, Balakrishnan began his own internship there after being alerted to the opportunity by science chair Anita Chetty. He found himself working in the university’s multi-disciplinary building, which was aptly named. “The research in this building was truly multidisciplinary, with a slight emphasis toward astronomy,” he said. “Not only did every floor sport a different field of science, but also I worked in the same room as other interns from the same program who were exploring projects related to cancer cells and marine animals.”
The overall atmosphere in the building was one of collaboration, with students helping one another in various ways. “Although we couldn’t collaborate in the specifics of each other’s projects, we aided each other through more general forms, such as coding, formatting spreadsheets and making PowerPoint presentations,” Balakrishnan said.
Balakrishnan’s project, “Designing a Spectroscopy Based Software to Produce Spectra of Kepler’s Binary Host Stars,” involved finding a way to identify binary stars. “We hoped to create a new system to confirm that two stars were binary stars, or gravitationally bound in some way.”
Collecting the data was one of the more fascinating parts of Balakrishnan’s internship. “I went to Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton to see how my mentor collected the pictures that I would analyze,” he recalled. “The process involved using a giant laser that shot a light into the clouds to simulate a star.
“Our program can turn an image of a star from a spectrometer into a fully developed spectral graph,” he added. “Although the project was hundreds of lines of code long, the most complex data structure I used was a two-dimensional list.”
Although he doesn’t plan to continue studying astronomy, the overall experience did enhance his applicable knowledge of computer science. “I will almost certainly use my acquired programming knowledge in future coding projects and college classes,” he said.
Neil Movva Grade 12
In an effort to explore the processes by which the body heals itself, senior Neil Movva studied under Dr. Jill Helms at the Hagey Lab for Reconstructive Surgery at Stanford University. The eventual result was his research project, “Force Responsive Reconstruction: Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Biomechanical and Histological Analysis.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by the body’s self-healing processes, and have done previous research on wound healing, tissue reconstruction and biomaterials,” Movva said. “Studying the reconstruction of ligaments is vital to furthering our understanding of how the human body adapts to changing physical conditions, and is especially relevant in the context of modern society’s growing senior population that will experience ligament wear and degeneration.”
In his research, Movva helped reignite a field that he believed had gone stagnant. “I employed advanced, novel techniques to identify and then demonstrate our new hypothesis regarding collagen fiber reconstruction at the cellular level,” he said, “bringing a new, data-backed viewpoint to the field after more than 50 years of stagnation.”
Helms “has been incredibly generous in sharing her knowledge and offering guidance as I learned the ropes of professional research,” he added.
He also found help among Harker’s science faculty, both in finding opportunities and refining his work. “Mr. Chris Spenner has fostered my interest in science research for the past three years, and graciously wrote recommendation letters to land me a position at Helms’ lab,” Movva said. “After I came back to school, Ms. Chetty patiently reviewed and edited my paper, while Mr. Spenner again lent his expertise to answer my questions as they popped up.”
One of the most exciting aspects of Movva’s work was the possibility of creating incredibly accurate computer models that can greatly assist doctors. “With the biologically corroborated framework I documented,” he said, “doctors may soon be able to perform rapid computer modeling of joints and other bony structures to determine the precisely optimal solution before beginning any invasive procedures.”
He also enjoyed seeing his work visualized through state-of-the- art technology. “A large part of my project focused on biomechanical computer-assisted modeling, and it’s hard to beat the excitement of seeing the first solution, visualized as a mesmerizing 3-D heatmap, after weeks of model construction and optimization,” he explained.
Karen Tu Grade 11
Although she had been interested in biology for some time, junior Karen Tu decided to embark on an internship to “get a better idea of what biological/wet lab research was like.”
She ended up at the pathology department at Stanford University, where she and a partner were mentored by graduate student Andrew Huh. “He basically taught us everything from basic biology to dissection techniques for our project,” Tu said.
While admitting that she “didn’t really have a specific interest in genetics or neurodegenerative diseases before my internship,” Tu developed an interest in the topic while researching for her project, “A Novel Tool for Monitoring Mitochondrial Calcium Dynamics in Dopaminergic Neurons.”
“I think that neurological diseases are really interesting because even a small change in the concentration of a certain substance in your brain could have drastic effects,” she said. “It’s really hard for doctors to diagnose and treat these diseases, so this field of research is also really important for improving our understanding of these diseases.”
Tu’s project was to develop [research that] may be used to test treatments for Parkinson’s disease. “In our project, we needed to find a single white-eyed fly from our entire stock,” she said. “This fly indicated that our project had succeeded, so we were really excited when we finally found it.”
Her colleagues also made her feel welcome and included. “Our lab had monthly lab meetings, where everyone would come down from their various rooms and discuss their research and the problems they encountered together,” Tu said. “The PI (principal investigator) whom I worked with and visiting researchers from other universities gave lectures, which were a highlight of the summer.”
One of the more fascinating things she learned during the course of her research, she said, was the stunning variety of fruit flies. “Before I started this project, I had no idea that fruit flies could have so many different physical variations,” she said. “There’s an entire spectrum of eye colors, wing shapes and other random appendages that they can develop.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
What a fall season it was for Harker sports! The girls varsity volleyball team became the first Harker team in any sport to host a NorCal playoff game, and, on the way, won a league championship and tied an Eagles record for the highest-ever CCS seed. Meanwhile, the tennis squad tied a Harker record for the most victories in one season; an Eagles golfer made it further than any other; a cross country runner raced to the highest state result in Harker history; and the water polo teams ended the season with wins. In addition, the football squad, with a freshman quarterback honored by the San Jose Mercury News, pulled off stunning comebacks and marched to enormous blowouts. It was an amazing, record-breaking season for the Eagles – and the year is just getting started!
Golf The golf team’s big story this year was freshman sensation Katherine Zhu. Zhu, who earlier in the season was named to the American Junior Golf Association’s Gary Gilchrist All-Star Team, which includes the top 10 female golfers between 12 and 15 years old, turned in spectacular performances for the Eagles. After winning the WBAL individual championship, Zhu shot a 3-under-par 69 at the CCS Championships. That catapulted her into the Northern California Championships in Salinas, further than any golfer in Harker history. As a whole, the team finished third in the league championships after going 5-5-1 for a .500 record. To boot, the middle school team took first place at the WBAL tournament at Los Lagos – its sixth WBAL championship in a row. The future looks very bright for Harker golf!
Cross Country Cross country broke records as well, as Niki Iyer, grade 10, ran for the highest state result in Eagles cross country history, finishing fifth out of 193 runners at the state cross country championships. Earlier in the season, Iyer and senior Corey Gonzales each ran in the league cross country championships and finished second, sending them to the CCS Championships. There, Gonzales placed eighth out of 100 runners, while Iyer had the fifth-best time of the day across all runners in all divisions. Also at CCS, Alexandra Dellar and Jack Rothschild, both grade 11, ran personal bests. Iyer also won Santa Clara County Girls Athlete of the Week in recognition of her 10th place finish and personal-best 18:18 run at the Clovis Invitational, a multistate championship race.
Tennis The girls varsity squad finished the year with a 15-7 record, tied for the most victories in a season in Harker girls tennis history. The Eagles won their first-round CCS match beating York School 4-3, before falling the next day to league rival Menlo to end the season.
Volleyball Fall marked one of the most remarkable seasons for girls volleyball – and, indeed, for any sports team in Harker’s history! The girls varsity team made it all the way to the second round of the NorCal Championships and, in so doing, became the first team in Eagles history in any sport to host a NorCal playoff game. Overall, the girls won nearly two-thirds of their games, finishing with a 19-10 record. The team won a WBAL league co-championship, clinched with a win over Sacred Heart Prep on Senior Night. After that, the team earned a No. 2 seed in the CCS tournament, tying them with their 2007 counterparts for the highest seed ever by an Eagles volleyball team. The girls’ amazing year also made headlines in the San Jose Mercury News, as the team was ranked in the paper, and senior Shreya Dixit was named Santa Clara County Girls Athlete of the Week for a tremendous stretch of performances against Menlo and Notre Dame-San Jose earlier in the year.
Football The Eagles ended the season with a 4-6 record in a dynamic rebuilding year that saw the team start six freshmen in varsity play all year long, including quarterback Nate Kelly, who racked up an insane 480 yards of total offense in the team’s final game of the year, a 48-15 trumping of St. Francis-Watsonville on Senior Night that sent seniors and team leaders Keanu Forbes, Sid Krishnamurthi, Christian Williams, Alyssa Amick and Allen Huang off in style. Kelly also was featured in the San Jose Mercury News’ sports highlight reel of top performances for a game in which he threw for 210 yards and five touchdowns and ran for 108 yards and three touchdowns to lead Harker to a 64-60 blowout victory. The most amazing game of this year, though, came in mid-October. After being down 21-0 in the first quarter, the Eagles roared back to capture a 32-28 victory on their final drive of the game when Forbes bolted into the endzone to cap off a magical game.
Water Polo Both clubs finished the season on winning notes. The boys finished with a 12-11 overall record and a third- place league finish, while the girls ended the year at 9-12 overall for a fifth-place league finish.
Last week, grade 9 students Anooshree Sengupta, Mona Lee, Maya Kumar, Aria Coalson, Aliesa Bahri and Jessica Susai – collectively known as the Harker Infinities – were named champions at the Central Valley VEX Robotics Challenge held at Modesto Junior College.
The team had spent months in preparation, meeting every weekend since before the school year had even started. “Our team has been working on the robot since summer during four-hour practice sessions each Saturday and Sunday,” said Coalson.
In addition to extensive work on their robot, the team members maintained a successful spirit of cooperation. “The team did an amazing job of cooperating with each other, staying positive, and putting all of their effort into any and all tasks that they had,” said Bahri. “Also, I loved that our robot design was extremely creative. I didn’t see many teams that resembled our robot’s overall design.”
“I think our stamina throughout the day was incredible. We managed to stay focused and win every match we played,” said Sengupta. “This was helped in part by our adaptability. Although we ran into a couple issues with the mat setup, we either talked to the refs or programmed around it.”
The Infinities’ performance in Modesto put them in contention for the Northern California championship. They hope to perform well enough to qualify for the world championship competition. Lee hopes that by winning a world championship, the Infinities can set an example for girls who aspire to enter robotics, “as it would show that it is just as possible for an all-girls team to win the world championship as it is for any other team.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In October, more than 8,000 visitors poured into the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. For the week of Oct. 8, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was the biggest show in town. Scientists, engineers, college students and faculty came from around the globe. An overwhelming majority of the attendees were female. As a rare high-school participant chosen for my research, I was honored to be a part of this intellectual mix.
For three days, the convention center was abuzz with activity. While the daylight hours were filled with informational and inspiring talks, evenings mixed in “mocktails” and entertainment. The conference was kicked off by Shafi Goldwasser’s keynote address. An electric engineering and computer science professor at MIT, Goldwasser is the world’s leading researcher in cryptography, working on privacy issues in our uber-connected world. She was followed by other luminaries from the computing world: Yoky Matsuoka from Nest Labs, Linda Northrop from the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Lori Mackenzie from Stanford University, and many others.
Personally, I thought this was two conferences in one. While much of the time was focused on how women are shaping modern technology, there was also a serious discussion around the role of society in shaping young girls, especially when it comes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Ruthe Farmer, director of the National Center for Women & IT, spoke on the importance of getting girls interested in science at a young age. While some of us at Harker may not realize the problem, I agree with her when she argues that there is a significant STEM gender gap.
Megan Smith, CTO of the United States, was a surprise speaker. She reports to the president himself, and she talked about her role in the government in helping reverse this gender gap tide. Deborah Estrin from Cornell University commented that women should be “forming science circles instead of coffee groups.”
Interestingly, a casual on-stage conversation between Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, garnered the most press. In response to a question around salary discrepancies between men and women, Nadella was “inarticulate” (as he himself later admitted), inadvertently implying that women should not be asking for raises and instead wait for “good karma” to play out. Many people in the audience, including me, were alarmed at his response.
Ironically, the ensuing media firestorm may have actually helped the cause. The dialogue went national, and certainly helped in increasing awareness around the disparities between men and women in the industry.
Beyond the engaging sessions, a personal highlight was the poster session. Over the last year, I have been working on research in data science. It was an honor to share my work at such a prominent venue. Hundreds of people stopped by to see my poster. They listened to my pitch. Some even hugged me and encouraged me. My project involved mining online thyroid cancer forums. My effort came about when a loved one was diagnosed with the disease. I found myself spending countless hours online, reading hundreds of “threads” and looking for answers. While these forums are valuable sources of data, searching them isn’t always simple. It was then that the thought of extracting “word-of-mouth” patient experiences came to me. By applying natural language processing techniques – part-of-speech tagging, topic modeling and association rules – I was able to develop models for discussion topics and thread summaries. I also laid the groundwork for discovering and correlating symptoms and treatments. My project ended up being a first-of-a- kind effort at mining such insights from free-form medical forums, making the data valuable to patients and health care professionals alike.
After three productive days, the conference came to an end. On my flight back, I went through my collection of more than 100 business cards, and remembered meeting my new friends, all of whom shared my passion for computing. While it’s true that women are severely underrepresented in STEM, and that females make up less than 20 percent of enrollees in our engineering colleges, I sense that a revolution is underway. It won’t be long before we turn this tide. I left the event inspired to double-down on my own dreams in the field of computer science. Rejuvenated by the energy, I am also committed to bringing more females into STEM.
I can’t wait for the conference registration to open next year. I hope some of you will join me there!
Last week was a big week for Harker sports! The girls varsity basketball team won the Pescadero tournament, thanks to an amazing comeback victory, while three fall athletes were honored for their tremendous seasons.
Basketball
The girls won the Pescadero High School Hoop Dreams Small Schools Invitational basketball tournament last week, defeating Pescadero and Alma Heights before roaring back for a come-from-behind 45-42 victory over Stevenson School in the championship game. Sophomore Jordan Thompson was named to the All-Tournament Team, thanks to her 16-point, eight-rebound performance. Freshman Elizabeth Beamish scored 14 points in the final game against Stevenson. The girls will celebrate their victory with two home games this week, hosting Oceana on Friday and James Lick Saturday.
The boys varsity squad, meanwhile, went 2-1 at the James Lick Invitational Tournament, coming away with a third-place finish. Their only loss was a nail-biter in double-overtime to Wilcox High School. The team bounced back from that heartbreaker with a 62-36 win over North Monterey County High on Friday night, thanks to 16 points from junior Rohan Desikan and 14 from senior Dylan Patel. Senior Sriv Irrinki also scored a massive 35 points in the victory over Andrew Hill. The boys play in the Lynbrook Tournament this week.
Soccer
The girls played a tie and a loss last week, matching Lynbrook 2-2 and then dropping their match to Fremont 4-3 despite goals from sophomores Joelle Anderson and Kailee Gifford. The Eagles play home games all week, hosting Redwood Christian on Tuesday and Terra Nova on Thursday.
The boys tied Saratoga High last week 2-2 thanks to goals from juniors Omar Hamade and Kevin Hu. They travel to Terra Nova Wednesday before returning home to host San Mateo on Friday.
Golf
Freshman golfer Katherine Zhu was recognized as an All Mercury News athlete by the San Jose Mercury News, an honor bestowed upon the top eight golfers in the entire section. The award was well merited: Zhu won the WBAL Individual Championship this year and reached the Northern California Championships, the furthest of any golfer in Harker history.
For the second year in a row, senior water polo player Billy Bloomquist was recognized as All-CCS Division II by a group of section coaches.
Football
Senior Keanu Forbes was featured in the San Jose Mercury News’ Highlight Reel for his outstanding football performance in last month’s Senior Night game. In that game, a 48-15 win over St. Francis CCC, Forbes carried the ball 14 times for 223 yards and had 91 yards on two kick returns.
Five Harker singers successfully auditioned for the California American Choral Directors Association’s All-State Honor Choir. Ishanya Anthapur, grade 12, was named to the mixed choir; Madhu Karra and Sahana Narayanan, both grade 11, earned spots on the women’s choir; and Ashwin Rao, grade 10, and Gurutam Thockchom, grade 11, joined the men’s choir. Earlier this year, Anthapur and Narayanan were named to ACDA’s Regional Honor Choir.
Rehearsals are tentatively scheduled to begin in March for a special performance at the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena on March 28.