San Jose Mercury News – Jan. 16, 2016: Harker eighth grader Mahika Halepete’s letter about the importance of education for low-income students appears in the Readers’ letters section.
GoStanford.com – Jan. 11, 2016: Dakota McNealy, grade 12, is the subject of a story about his decision to play for Stanford in the fall of 2016. He will join his brother, Maverick McNealy ’13, on the Stanford squad. See also the coverage in Golfweek and Palo Alto Online.
San Jose Mercury News – Jan. 6, 2016: Harker is mentioned as one of the Bay Area schools that had semifinalists in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search
India West – Dec. 23, 2015: Senior Vineet Kosaraju and his friend are featured in a story about a board game they created to help teach coding to children.
Napa Valley Register – Jan. 2, 2016: Harker alumnus Will Jarvis MS ’97 is featured in article about Jarvis Estate winery, which he runs with his father in the Napa Valley.
Coming off one of the best athletic seasons in Harker history, our student-athletes were showered with end-of-the-year accolades by their leagues, the CCS and the Mercury News for their efforts in competition and in the classroom.
Breaking News
The grade 5 JVB1 boys basketball team had an impressive December! Coaches Dan Pringle and Karriem Stinson led the team to a league title and the WBAL tournament championship, finishing the season with a 9-0 overall record as Harker defeated St. Matt’s 23-16 last night in the finals of the WBAL Tournament! Congratulations on a great season!
Girls Volleyball
With another great season on the books, the girls volleyball team ended as co-league champs and CCS semifinalists. Doreene Kang, grade 12, and Rachel Cheng, grade 11, received first team recognition. Jackie Chen, grade 12, Lindsey Trinh, grade 11, and Melissa Kwan, grade 10, took home second team honors, and Shannon Richardson, grade 12, received an honorable mention.
Football
The football team had its best record in school history (8-2) and made the playoffs for only the second time in school history, but the team racked up many personal awards as well! Nate Kelly, grade 10, was named league offensive Co-MVP, and Anthony Contreras, grade 10, was named league defensive co-MVP. First team honor went to Demonte Aleem, grade 9, Johnathon Keller, grade 12, James Pauli, grade 10, and Jadan McDermott, grade 10. Receiving second team recognition was Jalen Clark, grade 10, Saketh Gurram, grade 11, Will Park, grade 11, and Trenton Thomas, grade 12.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team had one of its best seasons in school history, finishing eighth in CCS and being named CCS academic champions in their sport. Leading the way was Katherine Zhu, grade 10, who was league champ, league MVP, tied for third in CCS and tied for 12th in NorCals. Ashley Zhong, grade 12, took home a first team award, Daphne Liang, grade 12, was among the second team standouts and Vienna Wang, grade 11, received an honorable mention.
Girls Tennis
The girls varsity tennis team was a CCS quarterfinalist this year, and the doubles team of Pamela Duke, grade 9, and Elizabeth Schick, grade 10, took second in CCS doubles. League first team honors went to Duke, Schick and Liza Egorova, grade 9. Izzy Gross, grade 12, Gloria Guo, grade 10, and Riya Singh, grade 9, were on the second team, with Aliesa Bahri and Kathleen Cheng, both grade 10, receiving honorable mentions. Duke was also named to the All-Mercury News girls tennis second team.
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team was named CCS academic champion for team members’ stellar work in the classroom. In the pool, Edward Sheu, grade 12, was named to the league first team, as well as the CCS coaches D2 second team. Arnav Tandon and Arben Gutierrez-Bujari, both grade 11, also received first team honors, with Zeyad El-Arabaty, grade 12, named to the second team.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team was also well represented in the league awards as Yasemin Narin, grade 12, and Meghana Karinthi, grade 10, took home first team recognition, and Helena Dworak, grade 12, was on the second team.
Boys Cross Country
Jack Rothschild, Lev Sepetov and Connor O’Neill, all grade 12, received league honorable mentions, and the team was named CCS academic champions for their sport.
Girls Cross Country
The girls cross country team ended its season with an eighth place CCS finish as well as some huge individual accomplishments. Niki Iyer, grade 11, was league champ, league MVP, second place in CCS, fifth in state and named to theAll-Mercury News first team (http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_29223827/allmercury-news-girls-cross-country:-gunn-s-gillian-meeks-is-the-runner-of-the-year). Alex Dellar, grade 12, was named to the second team, with Anika Rajamani and Lilia Gonzales, both grade 9, receiving honorable mentions.
Congratulations to all fall athletes for an amazing season. GO EAGLES!
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!
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!
San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 18, 2015 — Senior Sadhika Malladi and alumna Nitya Mani ’15 both received mayoral commendations for their outstanding projects showcased at the most recent Synopsys Science and Technology Championship.
SikhNet, Oct. 26, 2015 — Ameek Singh, grade 12, is featured in a story about Kids Tutoring Free, a tutoring service the he founded.
San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 15, 2015 – Senior Vineet Kosaraju is mentioned in the paper’s “School Scene” for being named a 2015 Davidson Fellow.
San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 8, 2015 – The Varsity Extra Highlight Reel recognized Shannon Richardson, grade 12, for her 18 kills in Harker’s 3-0 win against Menlo.
San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 30, 2015 – Harker girls volleyball reached the Mercury News Top 15. At the time, the team had a 6-6 record, only losing to ranked teams.
Senior Shay Lari-Hosain feels fortunate to be able to spend his summers in Pakistan, performing meaningful outreach work under the direction of a recipient of a United Nations recognition award for the promotion of culture and peace. Especially since the recipient happens to be his grandmother.
Every year, shortly after school lets out, Lari-Hosain heads off to work at the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan (HFP), a humanitarian organization co-founded by his grandmother, Yasmeen Lari. He speaks with pride of Lari, who made history as Pakistan’s first woman architect. Most recently, she was one of a few architects featured in an Architectural Digest article.
In 2000, Lari retired from corporate practice and turned her attention to humanitarian work/poverty alleviation, Lari-Hosain explains. “That shift requires completely different types of architecture. Starting early on in her life, she was designing glass and metal corporate buildings and urban housing in Karachi … and now [she] designs environmentally sustainable, small housing units for completely different, rural settings,” he said.
Lari co-founded the HFP in 1980 with her husband, noted historian Suhail Zaheer Lari. Her profile has been included among 60 women from around the world who have contributed the most toward the objectives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Last year, the Hilal-i-Imtiaz (The Crescent of Distinction) award was conferred on her by the government of Pakistan.
“I’ve been working at her foundation since I was an elementary school kid,” said Lari-Hosain, who most recently has done extensive marketing work for HFP’s Karachi office.
Lari-Hosain currently keeps busy as editor-in-chief of Wingspan, the upper school’s long-form magazine. Last February he brought his grandmother to Harker as a guest speaker, sharing her experiences with upper school journalists. She spoke about her work with education awareness programs, including women’s empowerment. She also shared stories about time spent training former militants, putting them on a different path to be more productive in rural society.
“My grandmother also has spoken on multiple occasions in Geneva (at the UN). In the past, she taught seminars at MIT and Harvard on architecture,” noted Lari-Hosain.
Lari-Hosain also worked to bring Al-Jazeera America’s “The Stream” co-host and Harker alumnus Wajahat Ali (MS ’94) to the upper school. Ali discussed his life as a Muslim-American during an assembly held on Sept. 19 in the gym. Lari-Hosain had the pleasure of introducing Ali during that assembly.
Last spring Lari-Hosain interviewed Ali for a Wingspan story regarding issues that Muslim-Americans face. That article got picked up by a Pakistani paper called DAWN, the leading English newspaper in Pakistan. Lari-Hosain’s article is linked here online.
Lari-Hosain said he was thrilled that Ali’s visit was such a success, and still generating continued conversation among upper school students and faculty alike. (Stay tuned for further coverage of Ali’s visit to Harker in the alumni section of the upcoming Winter 2015 issue of Harker Quarterly.)
Update – Mar. 27, 2015
Today, Andrew was the subject of a news story in ChinaDaily, and earlier this week was featured in a TV news segment on the Chinese language network Sinovision.
Mar. 10, 2015
Harker senior Andrew Jin won a first-place medal of distinction in the Global Good category in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search. He is the first Harker student since 2006 to be named a winner in the competition and is one of three first-place winners in this year’s Intel STS, each of them claiming a prize of $150,000.
Jin, along with seniors Steven Wang and Rohith Kuditipudi, were named finalists in this year’s Intel STS in January, making Harker the only school nationwide with more than two finalists. Harker had 15 Intel semifinalists, the most of any school in the country.
This past Sunday, Harker senior and avid dancer Sharanya Balaji performed for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who appeared at the SAP Center in San Jose. Balaji, who was previously featured in the San Jose Mercury News for organizing a benefit dance show for arts programs at schools, performed in one of three dance acts at the event. “The act that I was a part of was a medley of Indian classical dance forms,” Balaji said. “We were the representatives for Bharatnatyam.”
Prime Minister Modi’s appearance at the SAP Center was the last stop on a two-day tour of Silicon Valley that included meetings with the leaders of valley companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple. Balaji learned of the opportunity from her dance teacher. “We were chosen as the sole representatives for our dance style,” she said. Although the Mercury News piece was not a factor in her group being chosen, she said, “it did definitely get me more noticed during rehearsals.” Balaji is writing an article for Harker Aquila, a student publication and we will provide the link as soon as that story is ready!
Senior Sharanya Balaji was featured in the San Jose Mercury News for her efforts to bring arts education to Grant Elementary School in San Jose. An avid practitioner of the ancient Indian dance style of Bharatanatyam, Balaji held a benefit dance show three years ago, raising $4,000 that enabled Grant Elementary to bring music, singing and dance lessons to campus. Last year, she held another benefit show and raised twice that amount. Her third dance concert was held Aug. 22, with the amount raised to be determined.
Congrats to Vineet Kosaraju, grade 12, who was named a 2015 Davidson Fellow and will receive a $10,000 college scholarship! Kosaraju was one of only 20 students nationwide selected this year for the annual fellowship. The last Harker student chosen as a Davidson Fellow was Yi Sun ’06, in 2006.
On its website, the Davidson Institute summarized Kosaraju’s project, titled “3D RNA Engineering in a Massive Open Laboratory”: “Vineet created an interface that allows for the design of accurate 3D RNA molecules, and also discovered some design rules that create stable RNA designs. This allows for the more efficient creation and stabilization of new RNA molecules, bringing us closer to the eventual dream of personalized, commonly used RNA therapeutics.” Read more about his work here: http://www.davidsonfellowsscholarship.org/vineet-kosaraju/
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship was named one of the seven most-prestigious undergrad scholarships by U.S. News & World Report, along with Intel, Siemens and National Merit scholarships. http://www.usnews.com/…/7-prestigious-undergrad-scholarships