Junior Sally Zhu was recently published in the Concord Review, an academic journal featuring the historical research of high school students. Zhu’s paper surveys China’s hukou system, a household registration system set up in 1958, and the effects it has had on the country’s economy and citizens in the more than 60 years since it was founded. “I learned about the hukou system from my parents, who grew up in China,” Zhu said. “My mother came from an urban part of China, while my father came from a rural hukou, and they lived drastically differently, when it came to food, income, education and more.”
Zhu spent last summer and the fall working on the paper and conducted research using resources she had access to in her history classes and while doing previous research projects with Harker librarians. “I want to thank my history teachers and librarians for all I’ve learned from them when it comes to historical research and writing, [which] led me to submit my essay!” she said.
Next month, senior Nikhil Dharmaraj (pictured, second from the right) will visit Cambridge, Mass., to speak on a panel about the intersection of artificial intelligence and the humanities with Harvard University faculty members Jessica Fjeld and David Weinberger of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Dharmaraj’s work with Harvard began last summer during an internship at the college’s metaLAB, “a joint product of [Harvard’s] graduate school of design and the law school,” he explained, “which seeks to explore various issues at the intersection of technology and the humanities. Right up my alley, as I’m equally interested in both subjects!”
Dharmaraj worked on two projects during his time with metaLAB. The first, titled “Moral Labyrinth,” was showcased at the prestigious Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria, in September and consisted of mazes with borders made up of ethical quandaries about technology and nature. “My role in the project involved web development and early design of the digital labyrinth that ended up being exhibited at the festival,” said Dharmaraj. “I also contributed to the ideation of the physical labyrinth as well as general research for the project.”
His next project was “The Laughing Room,” an installation designed to emulate the set of a sitcom, in which participants’ conversations were scanned by an algorithm for speech patterns that would elicit laughter. A laugh track would play when the algorithm detected a phrase perceived as funny. “As a summer intern, I completed a full literature review on philosophical theories of laughter and computational humor, and I contributed to the project’s data collection and code,” Dharmaraj said. “It was done using a neural network, trained on various stand-up comedians.”
Upon matriculating at Harvard in the fall, Dharmaraj plans to continue working with metaLAB while working on his dual concentration in computer science and classics.
Last week, seven of this year’s Near-Mitra scholars – seniors Andrew Semenza, Amy Jin, Derek Yen, Emily Chen, Nirban Bhatia and Jackie He – visited the Stanford Humanities Center, which sponsors research into human history, arts, philosophy and culture. The students received a tour of the facility and met with the Hume Humanities Honors fellows. Each year, eight Stanford seniors are selected for the year-long fellowship.
Donna Gilbert, upper school history department chair, said the trip was made “to foster and facilitate a conversation and collaboration between our two programs.” Gilbert also identified a desire to discover how the fellows and Harker’s scholars have had similar experiences during their research and use those experiences to develop “best practices” in humanities research.
The idea to have the students meet with the Hume fellows was spurred by upper school English teacher Beth Wahl, who worked at the Stanford Humanities Center for several years. “It made sense to try to connect Harker’s Near-Mitra scholars to undergraduates doing humanities research and set up a conversation about research methods, the range of projects that fall under the humanities and the value of a humanities major,” Wahl told Harker Aquila.
More than 30 middle school students posted medal-winning scores in this year’s National Myth Exam, which took place during the spring semester. The annual exam, taken by all middle school Latin students, includes questions on Greek and Roman myths.
Silver medals, awarded to students who scored between 95 and 99 percent, were awarded to rising seventh graders Hita Thota, Jeremy Ko, Alan Jiang, Jasmine Li, Andrew Fu and Andrew Pluzhnikov; rising eighth graders Nicole Tian, Anoushka Khatri, Arnav Jain, Brandon Park, Jacqueline Hu, Angela Jia, Aaron Lo and Alex Zhang; and rising ninth graders Betsy Tian, Angela Cai and Akshay Manglik.
Bronze medal winners, who scored between 90 and 94 percent, were rising seventh graders Atri Banerjee, Anthony Tong, Linette Hoffman, Nicholas Wei and Isaac Yang; rising eighth graders Ishaan Parate, Aaron Tran, Prakrit Jain, Thresia Vazhaeparambil, Ysabel Chen and Akhilesh Chegu; and rising ninth graders Sidra Xu, Jason Lin, Anna Vazhaeparambil, Shalini Rohra and Maria Vazhaeparambil.
These students were presented with their medals and certificates in May at the California Junior Classical League’s state convention.
Congratulations to Harker sophomore Rose Guan, who recently won first place in Imagine magazine’s Creative Minds Poetry Contest in the “ages 13 and under” category. Imagine, published by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, acts as a resource for young talents, and publishes work by both students and experts in various fields. Rose’s poem, titled “Requiem,” is available to read on the Imagine website.