A group of Harker parents organized via the Chinese messaging app WeChat has been gathering and donating protective supplies to local hospitals. More than 100 families are involved with the effort, according to Harker parent Jing Wang (Cynthia, grade 5), who organized the group. As of mid-April, thousands of supplies have been donated, including more than 3,000 surgical masks and more than 1,000 N95 masks, as well as hundreds of face shields, handmade masks, shoe covers and more.
Hospitals that have received the goods include Kaiser Permanente centers through Santa Clara County, as well as Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose and Eden Hospital in Castro Valley. The group plans to keep sending supplies during the pandemic, and students are also busy creating posters. Photos of their donation activities also recently appeared on NBC Bay Area.
Even with a lost spring season, two junior Harker swimmers are getting national recognition. SwimSwam recently came out with a list of the top uncommitted high school junior boy swimmers and our very own Matthew Chung and Jason Kwok both made the list. The complete list can be seen here:
SwimSwam then published a second list naming the top NCAA swimming recruits in the boys high school class of 2021, with Chung earning an honorable mention on the exclusive list. Check out all the swimmers here:
In response to reports that Michigan was experiencing a troubling surge in COVID-19 cases, fourth grader Brandon Du and his mother, Yimin Zimmerer, last week sent supplies to Beaumont Hospital in Michigan to help its workers deal with the spread.
Du and Zimmerer had been donating to local hospitals and became “concerned by the rapid development in Michigan,” Zimmerer said. “It breaks our heart to see all the brave people fighting on the front line with insufficient protection.” They reached out to lower school English teacher Ann Smitherman, who is originally from Michigan and whose brothers, both former mayors, still live there. They recommended contacting Beaumont Hospital, and soon Du and Zimmerer had arranged to send a shipment containing 500 masks, 130 gowns and 130 pairs of goggles.
Zimmerer reported that the hospital staff was very happy to receive the supplies.
Earlier this week, Harker parent Virag Saksena (Riva, grade 12, and Anya, grade 8) and his team at 10th Street Distillery were recognized on Facebook by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo for converting their business into a producer of hand sanitizer to assist medical personnel and homeless residents.
Saksena’s 10th Street Distillery normally produces single-malt whisky, but the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity. “Something clicked when I heard that first responders and hospitals that put their own lives at risk everyday were unable to get hand sanitizer,” Saksena said. “Our distillery has a never-ending supply of the key ingredient for sanitizer: alcohol. So it was a no brainer to help out by making sanitizer.”
Shifting from making spirits to hand sanitizers was not a quick and easy process, Saksena recalled. “Before we could start production, we needed formulation approved by [the] FDA,” he said. “We didn’t want to make something which was ineffective or possibly even dangerous based upon internet recipes.” The FDA’s requirement that hand sanitizers be 80 percent alcohol was one of the main obstacles, because whisky must be distilled below 80 percent to be in accordance with the law. “Our whisky is typically distilled around 70 percent and aged at 55-62 percent,” said Saksena. “So we had to figure out how to change the process to reach 80 percent-plus alcohol content.”
The original intention, Saksena said, was to donate the hand sanitizers, “but most hospitals and cities offered to cover our costs. They had the budgets but couldn’t find the product.” Moreover, California-bound trucks carrying hand sanitizer were being diverted to other areas by the federal government. “So they wanted local companies to produce the product,” Saksena noted. Each week about 500 gallons is being provided to the city of San Jose; 50 to 100 gallons are being sent to El Camino Hospital; and the city of Santa Clara is receiving 50 gallons. A nominal fee is charged to cover costs. “We are also working with homeless shelters and health care providers,” Saksena said. “Some have budgets and can pay for it, others can’t. One of the things we will be doing is to sell to commercial business providing essential services and use that to subsidize donations for charities.”
When the demand for hand sanitizer has comfortably receded, Saksena and the staff at 10th Street Distillery are hoping to “go back to doing what we do best: distilling single-malt whiskies.” As they began making sanitizers, Saksena was pleased to discover that their whiskies had been winners at the San Francisco Spirits Competition, earning Gold and Double Gold.
For now, Saksena said, “I feel blessed that we have found a way to aid our community in these trying times.”
Harker students had a great showing at the 2020 Synopsys Science & Technology Championship, winning multiple first awards and grand prizes. Eighth graders Gautam Bhooma and Ramit Goyal were each grand prize winners, and also won first awards along with fellow eighth graders Zachary Blue, Alex Guo, Jordan Labio, Nathan Liu, Ella Lan and Heidi Lu. All won first awards and qualified for the California Science & Engineering Fair, which has been canceled along with the International Science and Engineering Fair, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixth graders Brenna Ren, Kallie Wang, Hubert Lau and Serena Lau were also first award winners.
At the high school level, juniors Krishay Mukhija, Sidra Xu, Russell Yang, Nicholas Yi and sophomore Harsh Deep all won grand prizes. Deep, Muhkija, Xu and Yang also took home first awards. Other upper school first award winners were juniors Michael Eng and Aditya Tadimeti and sophomores Akhilesh Chegu and Deven Shah.
In late March, a number of Harker families began making face shields to help local hospitals deal with a projected surge of COVID-19 patients. Having heard that 3D-printed face shields had become popular, Harker parent Mary Yang (Andrew Pangborn, grade 4) reached out to her friend, Jian Chen (Kevin, grade 5, and Julie, grade 4), who owns a 3D printer, and asked if he could produce some masks for her and her co-workers at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara. The family of Emma Lee, grade 5, and Anna Lee, grade 8, also joined the effort, and the group ended up printing and assembling 100 masks. “The doctors and nurses at Kaiser loved them,” reported Yang.
Last month, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sabrina Paseman ’09 founded the nonprofit Fix the Mask, which has developed a do-it-yourself method for constructing a surgical mask brace using rubber bands. The pandemic has caused a surge in demand for N95 surgical masks, leading to a shortage that has put medical workers at risk of infection, as the surgical masks currently in use do not attach to wearers’ faces tightly enough. The surgical mask brace developed by Fix the Mask significantly improves the efficacy of surgical masks and lowers the risk of infection. The company has posted a how-to video for creating the mask braces, and is working on “Surgical Mask Brace 2.0, a scalable, open source design,” according to its website.
Harker students had another great year in the Technology Student Association’s annual TEAMS (Tests of Engineering, Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition, with four teams taking top spots in California. The team of freshmen Rohan Bhowmik, Brian Chen, Riya Gupta, Nicholas Wei, Stephen Xia, Sabrina Zhu, Sally Zhu and sophomore Alex Hu took first place in the 9/10 division, where the team of sophomores Akhilesh Chegu, Harsh Deep, Shounak Ghosh, Mark Hu, Caden Lin, Sasvath Ramachandran, Kailash Ranganathan and Deven Shah took third overall. Also in the 9/10 division, Zach Clark, Angela Jia, Chirag Kaushik, Alex Liou, Rohan Thakur, Michael Tran, Aimee Wang and Gloria Zhu, all grade 10, placed fifth. Placing fifth in the 11/12 division were juniors Shray Alag, Annesh Ghosh Dastidar, Sophia Horng, Helen Li, Luisa Pan, Aditya Tadimeti, Bowen Yin and Alex Zhai.
The annual TEAMS competition tasks students with answering multiple-choice and essay questions on a chosen topic for the year. Top qualifying teams from each state are invited to the National TSA Conference, where teams solve written problems and present their solutions. This year’s national conference, originally scheduled to take place in Nashville from June 27-July 1, was canceled due to safety concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prep2Prep recently announced its All-CCS boys soccer teams, and our Eagles were well-represented among the best players in the South Bay and Peninsula.
Andrew Cheplyansky, grade 12, was named first team All-CCS, while Laszlo Bollyky, grade 10, was a third team honoree. Ishaan Mantripragada and Sasvath Ramachandran, both grade 10, each earned an honorable mention. Check out the full list of honorees here:
Nine Harker students won national medals in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, one of which is the first Harker middle schooler to receive a national medal in the contest.
Trisha Iyer, grade 8, received a silver medal for her poem, “Argan (T)oil.”
Senior Michael Tang was a gold medal winner for his piece, “The Pugilist.” Seniors Annie Ma and Ashna Reddy; junior Betsy Tian; sophomores Emily Tan, Esther Wu and Gloria Zhu; and freshman Austina Xu were silver medal winners, with Zhu winning a pair of medals, one for a hoodie design she created for the class of 2022.
National medalists are traditionally invited to participate in the national events celebration in New York City. This year’s events were unfortunately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a virtual celebration has been planned for June 4.