This morning, the Siemens Foundation announced the winners of this year’s Siemens Competition via live stream, and teammates David Zhu and Evani Radiya-Dixit were named $20,000 scholarship winners! Congratulations!
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This past weekend at the California Institute of Technology, juniors Evani Radiya-Dixit and David Zhu were named the winning team at the regional finals of this year’s Siemens Competition. Their project, titled “Automated Classification of Benign and Malignant Proliferative Breast Cancer Lesions,” earned them a shared $6,000 scholarship and a trip to the National Finals in Washington, D.C., which will take place Dec. 4-8.
Radiya-Dixit and Zhu received high praise from judges at the competition, including Alexandre Cunhe, director of CalTech’s Center for Advanced Methods in Biological Image Analysis, who said, “In this ‘big data’ era, with a larger data set, David and Evani’s approach has the potential of being very applicable to help distinguish a breast cancer tumor as benign or malignant. This could lead radiologists to be able to better diagnose biopsy images.”
The two students were later mentioned in a San Jose Mercury News story about the competition, in which five South Bay high school students are finalists.
Congratulations to these hard-working students, and good luck in the nation’s capital!
Several Harker students have been spending their free time teaching children at various locations in the San Jose area. Seniors Arun Shriram and Natalie Simonian, co-presidents of the Harker Science for Youth club, give monthly presentations at the West Valley Branch Library, the Rose Garden Branch Library and Grant Elementary School. “We teach various topics in science with several fun, hands-on activities that kids can participate in,” Shriram said. “Our activities include physics, chemistry, astronomy, rainforests, oceans, human anatomy, nutrition, psychology and others.”
Shriram said his experience teaching kids at California Academy of Sciences and The Tech Museum helped him realize how much he enjoys teaching science to younger students. “I realized that I loved teaching my favorite subjects to children and simplifying it for them,” he said. “Afterward, I became excited to teach kids.”
Another class, titled Kidz Kode, is taught by juniors Kedar Gupta, Varun Baldwa and Parth Pendurkar and specializes in Java programming. “The three of us manage two classes right now — one at the West Valley Library, with 20 kids, and another at the Bascom Library, with 14,” said Gupta. “We’ve already completed a Kidz Kode session, so that’s about 50 children total.”
The three Harker students first became interested in teaching while taking computer science classes at school and finding out that they all wished they’d started coding sooner. “We wanted to create a way for kids to get their feet wet in the field, and that’s how we came up with the idea for Kidz Kode,” Gupta said.
The students who teach the classes said they have found the experience of teaching to be highly rewarding. “The most enjoyable part of educating kids is the glows of joy that I notice when children understand something or relate new material to previous experiences,” said Shriram. “That means that I’ve inspired someone else to possibly choose a life of science or at least be interested in a subject they previously never knew about.”
Gupta said he enjoys seeing the progress students make after attending the Kidz Kode sessions. “Watching a child grow from not knowing how to open files all the way to writing complete Java programs is an awesome feeling, since we know that we as teachers led them on that path,” he said.
On Dec. 2, the Harker Red Cross Club held its annual blood drive at the upper school gym, inviting students, faculty and staff to donate blood to the American Red Cross. Harker Aquila has the full story.
Harker’s Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (WiSTEM) club held its fundraising week in mid-November, earning more than $2,000 for WISER (Womens Institute of Secondary Education & Research), “an organization that provides health care and education to young girls who would otherwise be traded for cattle to support impoverished families,” said May Gao, grade 11, a WiSTEM officer. “Based on the amount we raised, we can provide textbooks, clean water and a safe place to live for multiple girls in Kenya.”
To raise funds, students sold pearl milk tea, cake pops and brownies made by Sadhika Malladi, grade 12. The week also included fun activities, such as Name the Scientist, in which people were challenged to identify female scientists based on portraits and biographical information.
Final notes on the fall season, in which we had some great finishes!
Cross Country
Congratulations to junior Niki Iyer on her fifth place finish at the state cross country meet, held over the Thanksgiving break. Iyer competed with 191 other runners in the Division 4 championships held in Fresno, and shaved 30 seconds off last year’s fifth place finish. She will race next at the Footlocker High School West Regional on Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.
Girls Tennis
Lizzie Schick, grade 10, and Pam Duke, grade 9, were the last Harker team alive in the fall playoffs as they took the court on Tuesday at the Bay Club Courtside to face the duo from Menlo-Atherton High School. They won a highly contested three games, 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, to become the first Harker doubles tennis team in school history to make the CCS finals. Lizzie and Pam fought hard, but lost to a very strong Los Altos duo. Congratulations on an amazing season!
Harker’s Siemens Competition finalists, juniors Evani Radiya-Dixit and David Zhu, have been featured in numerous media since the announcement of their win at the Region One Finals at CalTech. Check below to see some of the outlets that picked up the story!
Last weekend, grade 5 student Rahul Mulpuri and his team won the Project Award at the First Lego League (FLL) Northern California qualifying tournament held at Intel headquarters. The award recognizes innovative solutions, research and presentation skills. His team was one of 16 that participated in the tournament. His teammates hailed from Pinewood, Khan Lab and Stratford. “It was an amazing collaboration between these kids from different schools working together towards a common goal with great team spirit,” said Rohini Malpuri, Rahul’s mother.
Lorenzo Martinelli, grade 5, was recently named Pacific Swimming’s 2015 Outstanding Short Course Swimmer in the age 10 and under category. Pacific Swimming comprises 120 swim clubs and 16,000 swimmers, making it the third largest of USA Swimming’s 59 regional associations. Martinelli was selected from among thousands of male swimmers in his age group.
“I am so excited to receive this award! Swimming is my passion and I love to win. It is fun to be recognized for winning!” he said.
Martinelli was honored at the 2015 PacSwim Awards banquet, which took place on Oct. 10 at the Embassy Suites Milpitas-Silicon Valley. Attending swimmers, their families and coaches enjoyed dinner, awards and a special visit from three-time Olympic swimming champion Natalie Coughlin.
Hearty congratulations to Natasha Rajaram, grade 4, who in mid-October won the “Little Mo” National Tennis Championship for girls age 9! The “Little Mo” tournaments are fun and provide good competition for tennis players age 8-12. Rajaram worked her way through sectionals and regionals to qualify for the championship, held in Austin, Texas. She also was one of just a few girls to be nominated for the sportsmanship award, although she did not win it.
“There are usually about four or five girls nominated for the award,” said Carol Weyman, a spokesperson for the event. “Just to be nominated is a great honor.”
In late October, Harker’s chapter of the Junior Classical League headed to Stanford University for the Ludi Octobres event.
Numerous upper school competitors placed high. Bobby Bloomquist, grade 9, took first place in Grammar III, in which Mathew Mammen, grade 9, won an honorable mention. In Mythology III, Praveen Batra, grade 10, took first place, with Allison Wang, grade 12, and Sara Min, grade 9, taking second and third, respectively. Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 9, finished third in Grammar III, and Alexander Young, grade 9, tied for first in History and received an honorable mention in Mythology III. Batra also won second place in Advanced Reading Comprehension, in which Arnav Tandon, grade 11, Andrew Semenza, grade 10, and Allison Wang, grade 12, tied for third. Alexander Lam finished second in Advanced Vocabulary, while Edgar Lin, grade 10, tied for first place in Derivatives and took third place in History. Semenza had another tie for second place in Derivatives and received an Honorable Mention in Advanced Grammar. Wang took second place in Mythology and tied for second place in Vocabulary.
Middle school competitors were no less impressive. In the MS-1 division, Lucy Ge, grade 6, took third place in Grammar I, while classmate Aaron Lo earned third place in History. Brandon Park, grade 6, was awarded second place in Mythology and an honorable mention in Derivatives. Grade 7 had a strong appearance in the MS-2 division, as Arohee Bhoja had first place wins in Vocabulary and Greeting Cards, and took second place in Grammar II and third in Reading Comprehension II. Angela Cai took first in Mythology and tied for second in Daily Life with classmate Jason Lin. Akshay Manglik took second place in three categories: Derivatives, History and Mythology. Annamma Vazhaeparambil won first place in History and second place in Greeting Cards, while Mariamma Vazhaeparambil had honorable mentions in Derivatives and Mythology. The MS-3 division, in which Harker’s grade 8 students participated, saw Ashley Duraiswamy take first place in Reading Comp II and tie for third in Grammar II, while Jeffrey Fung took first in History, second in Grammar II and third in Derivatives. Allison Jia had a first place win in Vocabulary and received an honorable mention in Derivatives, in which Kyle Li took first place in addition to taking first place in Mythology and second History. In Reading Comprehension II, Kalyan Narayanan took second place in addition to tying for third in Grammar II. Jin Tuan had second place finishes in Derivatives and Vocabulary, and George Wehner, grade 7, took first in Grammar II. Finally, Jasmine Wiese, grade 8, was awarded an honorable mention in Derivatives.
Last week, the Arrive Alive Tour hit the upper school campus to teach students about the dangers of distracted driving, namely driving while sending text messages. Using a VR simulator, students sat behind the wheel of an SUV and attempted to send text messages while driving down a busy road. Students would almost immediately find themselves swerving to maintain their course, rarely remaining able to drive for more than a few seconds without crashing in the simulator.
Although there was also a simulator that mimicked the effects of alcohol on drivers’ motor skills, texting and driving was a more pressing concern for Harker students. “I think most young people today have a pretty good grasp of the fact that drinking and driving is illegal and dangerous, but not a lot of people in general I think take cell phone use behind the wheel of a car seriously,” said Patrick Sheehy, one of the Arrive Alive representatives visiting the campus. “If you look around on the road, people are texting and driving everywhere you look.”
Arrive Alive is a project of Unite Corp., a health and wellness organization based in Grand Rapids, Mich., which holds events at college and high school campuses across the country.
“It seems easy, but then you end up doing it and it’s actually not,” said participant Tiffany Shou, grade 10. “I didn’t even get to pull up Snapchat.” Shou hoped that this experience would help her to convince a friend to stop texting while driving.
“Statistically, for every alcohol-related accident on the road you’re now looking at about four texting and driving accidents,” said Sheehy, who had a piece of simple advice for young drivers: “Keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel.”
“I Dream a World,” this year’s upper school fall vocal concert, brought the campus’s five choral groups together for a night that largely celebrated the music of North America and its multicultural traditions.
Bel Canto, directed by Jennifer Sandusky and accompanied by Vedaad Shakib, grade 11, started things off with the American folk tune “Down in the Valley,” followed by sprightly Canadian folk song “Rattle on the Stovepipe.” Bel Canto was then joined by the singers of Camerata and Acoustics to perform the concert’s namesake, Andre Thomas’ “I Dream a World.”
Susan Nace then directed Camerata in a stirring rendition of the American folk song “Shenandoah,” and Acoustics, co-directed by Ashwin Rao, grade 11, performed the Billie Holiday classic “God Bless the Child.”
The always-entertaining boys choir Guys’ Gig took the stage for a cappella performances of the Kelly Clarkson smash “Since U Been Gone” followed by “Up on the Roof,” made famous by doo-wop legends The Drifters.
Closing the evening were Cantilena, the women’s vocal group directed by Susan Nace, who delivered a rousing five-song set that included the traditional “Run Children Run,” the Iroquois soundscape “Watane” and Sue Johnson’s “Sister My Sister,” which included solos and duets highlighting the talents of every member of the group.