Rising sophomore Arushi Sharma recently took top spots in two vocal competitions. The singer won a grand prize across all age groups in the 2021 US New Star Vocal Competition, in which competitors prepare two solo vocal pieces to perform. In the International Youth Music Competition, which featured submissions from across the world, Sharma took second prize in the Broadway, Disney and Musical Theatre category. A singer for more than 10 years, Sharma has performed in many Harker productions, including the spring 2021 production of “Les Misérables.”
Harker upper and middle school VEX robotics teams had a very successful year, with seven teams qualifying for the world championship in May and four winning awards at the recent California State Championship. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most VEX events were held remotely. Live Remote Skills (LRS) events challenged a single robot to score as many points as it could, whereas Live Remote Tournament (LRT) events pitted a pair of robots against each other to score as many points as possible. Throughout the season, the teams participated in various LRS and LRT events, improved their robots and persevered through the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sophomores Amrita Pasupathy and Nidhya Shivakumar were tournament finalists in the California High School State LRT Championship and are currently ranked 12th in high school World Robot Skills Rankings. At the California High School State LRS Championship, ninth graders Jordan Labio, Sriram Bhimaraju and Zachary Blue were the Robot Skills Champions and earned the Excellence Award given to the top all-around team, based on robot performance and judging. Ninth graders Ella Yee and Julie Shi qualified for the state championships by being a Robot Skills Runner Up at an earlier LRS event.
In the California Middle School State LRS Championship, the one-person team of eighth grader Kaitlyn Su was named the Robot Skills Champion and earned the Amaze Award for having the top performing robot. She is also ranked first in middle school World Robot Skills Rankings. In the same event, seventh graders Janam Chahal, Kimi Yashar, MacEnzie Blue and Minal Jalil, earned the Design Award given to the team with the most effective robot design process. Sixth graders Rohan Goyal, Krishna Muddu, Risa Chokhawala, Orion Ghai and Ayden Grover qualified for the state championships. They earned a spot in the World Championship by claiming Robot Skills Runner-Up at an earlier LRS event. Spark Robotics — made up of eighth graders Vedant Balachandran, Rushil Jaiswal, Rishi Lalwani and Shivraj Panja, who also presented at the 2021 Harker Research Symposium — also qualified for worlds.
Harker students Krish Maniar, grade 10, and Kabir Ramzan, grade 9, together with Saratoga High sophomore Shafin Haque, received the grand prize and several other awards at the HackDefy 2.0 hack-a-thon, held the weekend of March 27. Within 24 hours, the team developed a technology called EyesAIght that analyzes retinal images using artificial intelligence to help ophthalmologists determine the stage of diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can cause vision loss and blindness in diabetics. One in 10 Americans are currently diagnosed with diabetes, and 84 percent of patients are unaware of their condition because no objective assessment tool exists to automate detection, the team explains in its project overview.
EyesAIght also estimates the likelihood that diabetic retinopathy can cause blindness, thereby allowing physicians to determine appropriate treatment options. EyesAIght also produces a convenient summary report for review by physicians by utilizing natural language processing technology, .
In addition to winning the grand prize among 162 participants, comprising both high school and university teams at HackDefy, the team also received the Best High School Hack award. The trio also received awards at other hack-a-thons, including Best Healthcare Project at Merge 2021 and Best Medical Hack at Hack-2-Connect 3.0. For their efforts the team received over $650 in cash prizes and over $5,000 worth of non-cash prizes.
Over the winter break, chess enthusiast Omya Vidyarthi, grade 5, took first place in the U10 girls division of the FIDE Online World Cadets & Youth Rapid Championships. The event invited the top players from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe to compete. Vidyarthi was the top American player in her age group and competed with players from countries including Brazil, China, Guatemala and India. Congratulations!
In November, Harker fifth graders Aaron Luo, Brandon Labio, Nathan Yee and Trisha Shivakumar won the Champion’s Award at the NorCal First Lego League robotics qualifying tournament. The team received the award for having top performances in all areas of the competition, including robot design, project and core values. The team’s performance also earned it a spot at the NorCal regional tournament.
Another team of Harker fifth graders — Ava Zarkesh, Ivanya Sadana, Risa Chokhawala and Urvi Singhvi — won the Judges Award and the ‘Rising Stars Award’ for setting an example for other teams and producing a solution for two very different problems while adhering to the competition’s core values.
The team later competed at the FLL NorCal Peninsula Championships, where it won the Robot Design Award. The award is given to a team whose robot performs consistently well in areas such as efficiency, durability and challenge missions.
In early December, eighth graders Ashwin Kuppahally, Adrian Liu, Vivek Nayyar, Kabir Ramzan and Om Tandon competed the VEX IQ Challenge robotics tournament in Los Altos, where they earned the Excellence Award, the competition’s highest honor. This award is given to teams who excel in criteria such as event challenges, teamwork and robot design. At a previous competition, the team qualified for the state championship and the US Open Robotics World event after being recognized for the top robot design. They will compete the VEX State Championships in March and the CREATE U.S. Open Robotics Championship the following month.
At the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) international final, held Nov. 8-10 in Hungary, sixth graders Aidan Okyar and Mikhil Kiran and their teammate achieved perfect scores in a competition to design a SMART city. The team’s final ranking, including its robots’ mission completion times, was 22nd out of 92 teams in the Regular Elementary category, which made the trio the highest-ranking team from the United States across every age group. Congratulations!
In mid-September, three Harker sixth graders took top spots at the World Robot Olympiad USA national championship in Sunnyvale. Kallie Wang and her teammates won first place in the elementary group (for ages 12 and under) in the regular category, and Mikhil Kiran and Aidan Okyar’s team placed third and won the best robot design award. As a result, both teams have been invited to the international finals in Hungary, set to take place in November.
Since its inaugural season in 2004, the World Robot Olympiad robotics competition has provided young people from more than 65 countries the opportunity to develop their design and problem solving skills. Each year it attracts more than 26,000 teams.
On Oct. 12, the student-founded nonprofit KidzRule held the second-annual Santa Clara Children’s Business Fair. The event, held in Santa Clara’s Live Oak Park, was co-founded last year by Harker sixth grader Mikhil Kiran. The organizers worked closely with the city of Santa Clara to put on the fair, and Kiran had several key responsibilities, including raising funds, getting plans approved by the city council and marketing the event.
Several businesses started by Harker students were present at the fair, including third grader Ayza Tahirzad and fifth grader Bazigh Tahirzad’s Pet Rocks; seventh grader Avayna Glass’ Kissify Soaps; fifth graders Risa Chokhawala and Trisha Shivakumar’s Books and Bottlecaps; and C3 Custom Card Cases, founded by sixth graders Ruhan Arora and Alejandro Cheline, and fifth grader Ian Cheline. In total, 99 young entrepreneurs were showcased at the fair.
Attendees spent their time visiting booths and listening to the businesses pitch their products. Some of the businesses sold all of their available inventory. A custom greeting card business received a large corporate order and another was given an opportunity to market therapeutic pillows through a local physical therapy business.
Several prizes were awarded to the business at the fair, and C3 Custom Card Cases took first place in Best Salesmanship in the ages 10-12 category. Businesses were judged by a panel that included Harker DECA members Alivia Li, grade 10; Lisa Barooah, Bryan Zhang, Elaine Zhai, all grade 11; and seniors Mahi Kolla and Christine Tang, led by business and entrepreneurship teacher Juston Glass.
Santa Clara city councilmember Kathy Watanabe was a guest speaker at the event, and expressed her appreciation for the organizers’ hard work and the important learning opportunities the fair offered. “I was so impressed by the product creativity, marketing but most importantly how some entrepreneurs used this as a way to give back to communities in need,” she said.
Earlier this month, eighth grader Arjun Gurjar earned his second-degree black belt in karate after a rigorous series of tests spanning three days, which covered sparring, grappling, open forms and other techniques. Gurjar, who has studied martial arts for eight years, plans to take a break before pursuing his third-degree black belt. Congratulations and best of luck!