On Tuesday, senior Jacqueline He was named a 2018 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, becoming the sixth student from Harker to earn Presidential Scholar recognition in the school’s history. He, who also won a national gold medal in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, selected English teacher Nicholas Manjoine to be recognized as a distinguished teacher.
About 5,200 students qualified for the program, based on a variety of achievements, including outstanding scores on College Board SAT and ACT exams, success in the National YoungArts Foundation’s YoungArts competition and nominations. The Commission on Presidential Scholars then selected 20 Presidential Scholars in the Arts based on artistic achievement, personal characteristics, and leadership and service activities.
As one of this year’s Presidential Scholars, He is eligible to attend a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. on June 24.
Ranjita Raghavan ’08 had a fascinating break from her studies: After three years of medical school, she took a year off to work as a medical producer for “The Dr. Oz Show” in season nine.
“I was able to bring my knowledge of medicine to the world of writing and producing,” Raghavan said. “It was a rewarding job, because I learned firsthand how to produce a daily talk show, made tougher when you embed medical content in it.
“My job entailed working with the segment producers to write show scripts that convey complex medical concepts to the audience in an accurate and compelling way. This included the development of demonstrations and animations, along with their talking points that helped visualize these concepts. We also orchestrated lab testing and experiments and would brief Dr. Oz and medical experts on all show days about show content. I am heading back to USC to finish off my medical degree in a few weeks, but was lucky enough to cap off the experience by witnessing our show’s Emmy win for Best Informative Talk Show.”
Raghavan noted the medical producers are on the show now and then, and she gets to be the “expert” on the last segment of the show, airing on May 21, so be sure to tune in to see her on the show!
At the MathCounts state competition on March 31 at Stanford University, the Harker middle school team of grade 8 students Alexander Hu, Rishab Parthasarathy and William Zhao and seventh grader Sally Zhu won the state MathCounts championship in a field of 35 teams and 175 students. It was the fourth win for Harker at the state level, following wins in 2008, 2011 and 2014. Among individual competitors, Parthasarathy placed second overall after a tie-breaker, and Zhu placed fourth. Alexander Hu also turned in a great performance, placing 10th. Other standouts were Zhao, who finished in 25th, and Mark Hu, grade 8, placing 29th.
Another state-level competition was held concurrently for Southern California students, and the four highest-scoring students in the state qualified for the team that will represent California at the MathCounts National Competition this weekend in Washington, D.C. Parthasarathy placed among the top four statewide to qualify for the National Competition. Zhu missed qualifying by the narrowest of margins, earning just a single point less than the student who made the California team.
“Most of these students have been with the MathCounts program for two years and the title of California state champions is well-deserved for each one of them,” said middle school math chair Vandana Kadam. “This is an incredible achievement for the students and for the school.”
Miya Jones, high school representative from the Art Institute of San Francisco, came to Harker in late April as part of the CareerConnect program to educate students on various employment paths in the commercial art field. She presented student portfolios from the institute, along with works ranging from caricatures to advertisement videos.
Jones talked about potential job fields that require art skills, including culinary arts, graphic design, drawing, animation, 3-D design, photography and video game graphics. Students viewed examples of works by college students, and learned how to create a resume and display one’s works. Billy Fan, grade 9, said, “The speaker did a good job of explaining all of the features at the art institutes and gave me insight on different career paths.”
Jones also spoke to what the Art Institute provides in terms of advancing one’s career in the humanities. Maria Teplova, grade 9 noted, “(She) gave me an idea about potential college choices and whether the art institute would be good for me or not, and gave me an idea of different art major options.”
Jones stressed the importance of networking and going to college in an area that offers jobs in students’ field of interest. She ended the talk by answering students’ questions and offering them an opportunity to connect with the San Francisco Arts Institute.
Last month, Harker’s upper school robotics team traveled to Houston for the FIRST Championship, an international competition with representation from more than 60 countries. It was the team’s first appearance at the championships since 2005, and signs were good early on, as the team cleared the quarterfinals of its group “by a wide margin,” said upper school computer science chair Eric Nelson, who oversees the robotics program. The team’s success continued as it won the Roebling Division (for the first time in the team’s history) and proceeded to the elimination rounds, where the winners of each division faced off. Harker and its alliance finished fourth overall, ending a great run for the team!
Over the weekend, four Harker teams won awards in the 2018 Tech Challenge Showcase, held at the Tech Museum in San Jose. At the event, teams of grade 4-12 students demonstrated the devices they had constructed for this year’s contest. More than 600 teams comprising 2,000 students entered the competition, which challenged them to design and build a device that could successfully fall 10 feet into a drop zone, then deliver a payload to a target situated on a ramp, without the aid of batteries or electricity.
Grade 4 students Sofia Shah, Minal Jalil, MacEnzie Blue, Tiffany Zhu, Tanvi Sivakumar, Arushi Sahasi and honorary team member Rocky (Jalil’s dog) formed team “SMMARTT,” which received an outstanding overall award in the grades 4-5 category.
Sixth graders Nathan T. Liu, Adrian Liu and Aniketh Tummala, known as the “Huskies,” won the award for top tech challenge story, which explained the origins of the device they built. The “FlyteZON” team, made up of Neel Handa, Om Tandon and Zachary Blue, all grade 6, won an award for being outstanding overall.
Team “Flopper Waffles” – grade 7 students Brian Chen, Andrew Fu, Jacob Huang and Nicholas Wei – received an award for outstanding device performance.
Huge congratulations to Suchita Nety ’13 and Angela Ma ’14 for being awarded 2018 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans!
This unique program honors 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursuing graduate degrees in the United States. Each of the recipients, selected from more than 1,700 applicants, was chosen for his or her potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture or his or her academic field. Recipients receive up to $90,000 in funding toward their education over two years.
Nety’s and Ma’s complete bios are on the website, but here is a quick summary of what these women have been doing since leaving Harker.
Ma’s award will support her in her pursuit of a Ph.D. in business economics at Harvard University. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard, has been editor-in-chief of the Harvard Economics Review and is a John Harvard Scholar. Ma was an avid ballet dancer while at Harker, and she danced, choreographed and was treasurer for the Harvard Ballet Company. She plans to become an economics professor and is interested in financial crisis management.
Nety will use the award to continue her work on a Ph.D. in biological engineering at MIT and an M.D. at Harvard. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from CalTech and spent four years working with protein-based reporters for ultrasound imaging, and earned a number of accolades including the 2016 George W. Housner Prize for Academic Excellence and Original Research, the Arie J. Haagen-Smit Memorial Award and the Hallett Smith Prize for Essay Devoted to Shakespeare. Along with her academic efforts, Nety has volunteered at a literacy nonprofit, attained professional status in Bharatanatyam, a style of Indian classical dance, and choreographs hip-hop. Her goal is to work with patients as an oncologist and develop molecular tools to assist in cell-based therapies.
Four Harker upper school students and one middle school student have advanced to the third round of the USA Math Olympiad and Junior Math Olympiad, respectively. Sophomores Cynthia Chen, Rohan Cherukuri and Jeffrey Kwan, senior Swapnil Garg and eighth grader Rishab Parthasarathy were among the top 500 students from the roughly 75,000 who took the American Math Contest in February to qualify for the third round. The nine-hour test is taken over the course of two days. Top scorers will have the chance to represent the United States at the International Mathematical Olympiad, set to take place this summer in Romania.
The Harker community was delighted to hear that Surbhi Sarna ’03 sold her medical device company, nVision Medical, for $275 million to Boston Scientific, but the real story is about Sarna’s journey to help women who were being underserved in health care. The story is well-told in the Forbes article that announced the sale, and the Harker community has had the moving experience of watching Sarna travel her path to help others. CBS also did a news story on her.
After graduating from Harker, Sarna studied molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as a clinical scientist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. After graduating from Berkeley in 2007, she worked as an engineer for medical device companies Abbott Vascular and BioCardia. In 2009, only six years out of Harker, she founded venture-backed nVision Medical, dedicated to developing technology to help gynecologists more quickly detect ovarian cancer. Following a successful clinical trial, the company received FDA approval for its device in November 2015. Harker has been honored to follow her progress.
In 2013 Sarna took time from her busy schedule to be the keynote speaker at the Harker Research Symposium, where she related the circumstances that fueled her drive to a crowd of about 400. After suffering from an ovarian cyst in her early teens, she became determined to create better conditions in the field of female health.
In January 2014, Sarna was named to Forbes prestigious “30 Under 30” list in the medical category. At that point, her company had raised $4.5 million from Catalyst Health Ventures, Draper Associates and Astia, a group that assists female entrepreneurs.
Sarna noted at the time, “It is a great honor to be chosen as one of Forbes ’30 Under 30.’ I know Harker has a lot do to with my drive to be an entrepreneur and I’m grateful for all of the teachers that inspired me while I was there.”
In the summer of 2016, Sarna was interviewed for an article in Harker Quarterly on alumni in science, in which she spoke of FDA approval for her device. “It was lots of work, but it couldn’t be more worth it. … From a dream, to a slide deck, to a prototype, to raising money and hiring a team, to first use in a person, to 90 patients successfully treated, to FDA approval!” she said in the article. Offering advice to other recent graduates interested in pursuing STEM and research education, she stressed the importance of seeking out mentors and advisors.
In 2017, Sarna was presented with the 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award by Harker’s Office of Alumni Relations and was honored at Homecoming halftime.
In the 2016 Harker Quarterly article, Sarna had advice for anyone with a quest like hers. “Take meetings with everybody, even when you don’t understand the direct benefit in doing so. Cast your net wide to open up doors,” she said. It is also important to follow your own passions, she added. “I started out as a patient, and I had to believe there were better options out there for women like me. I wanted to make a mark, and at the end of the day you have to follow your passions. It’s extremely rewarding to now be in a career providing service to others.”
Alexis Gauba ’17, now attending the University of California, Berkeley, is part of a team awarded $10,250 for in-depth research on blockchain protocols specifically focusing on alternative consensus. Blockchain is a method of secure storage originally developed for cryptocurrency and now under development for a variety of uses.
The Blockchain Lab at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET) at Berkeley posted the news yesterday. Gauba is one of seven members of the team that will investigate blockchain use and development. The team’s grant application was titled “Framework for Cryptoeconomic Incentives in Proof of Stake (PoS) Systems.” Three other teams also received awards, for a total of $50,000.
In its announcement the Blockchain Lab noted, “We are awarding each of these teams to help to support applied and fundamental research that will reduce barriers in the adoption of blockchain and its inclusion in an increasingly digital world with new possibilities for fairness, transparency and efficiency in both financial transactions and information sharing.”
Gauba, who is working on a combined degree in electrical engineering and computer science, is taking the initiative to organize what is expected to be the largest conference to date for women in blockchain. Blockchain at Berkeley is hosting She256: Women in Blockchain Conference on April 23.
Gauba noted, “We want to highlight and connect communities within the blockchain industry that strive for inclusion, equality and professionalism, and are partnering with all similarly committed individuals and organizations in this objective.
“We have designed a program that will explore the groundbreaking research, protocols and specific applications of blockchain, especially in projects led by women in the space. We want to foster collaborations between researchers, professionals and students to help women get access to the right resources and enter the industry with confidence, while also highlighting the achievements of prominent strong women already established in the space. No prior experience in technology, blockchain or computer science is required. We encourage everyone to come, regardless of major or experience level. Celebrate and learn with us!” she added.