A special lunchtime reception for students who participated in this year’s Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search was held March 19 in the Nichols Hall rotunda. The event celebrated the hard work and dedication each of the students committed to their projects.
Science faculty also were in attendance as this year’s Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists, all seniors – Vikas Bhetanabhotla, Stephanie Chen, Christopher Fu, Anika Gupta, Saachi Jain, Sreyas Misra, Preethi Periyakoil, Rahul Sridhar, Vikram Sundar and Albert Zhao – received their certificates.
Students were treated to desserts and kind words from science department chair Anita Chetty. Shreyas Parthasarathy, grade 12, who entered both the Intel and Siemens competitions this year, said he enjoyed the process of doing research for his project. “I learned a whole bunch of stuff that I never thought I would learn,” he said, briefly discussing his project that dealt with mapping the Milky Way. “Astronomy sort of pulls from all these different disciplines.”
“I had a lot of fun doing my research,” said Periyakoil, an Intel semifinalist who said that the process was tough “but also very rewarding. It was nice to be able to share my work with others.”
Five teams of Harker upper school students – 40 students in all – competed in a regional Test of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition in late February. The TEAMS competition challenges students to collaborate to solve real-world engineering problems that test their knowledge of math and science.
At the event, held at San Jose State University, Harker won the top spots in both the grades 9-10 and grades 11-12 levels.
The “Harker D” team – made up of Rishabh Chandra, Jonathan Dai, Lawrence Li, Jonathan Ma, Anika Mohindra, Emily Pan, Michael Zhao and Jessica Zhu, all grade 10 – took first place in the grades 9-10 category. Taking second place in this category was the “Harker E” team of freshmen Kai-Siang Ang, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Peter Wu and David Zhu and sophomore Stanley Zhao.
First place in the grades 11-12 category went to the “Harker B” team of Andrew Jin, David Lin, Cindy Liu, Steven Wang, Rachel Wu, Stanley Xie, Leo Yu and Andrew Zhang, all grade 11. In second place was the “Harker A” team, comprising juniors Billy Bloomquist, Patrick Lin, Matthew Huang, Nitya Mani, Sachin Peddada, Vivek Sriram, Helen Wu and Samyukta Yagati.
Once the scores from this and other TEAMS competitions are tallied, the highest-scoring teams from California will move on to the national competition, held in July in Washington, D.C.
On Saturday, March 29, at the upper school campus, The Harker School’s science department and the student WiSTEM Club (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) will present the ninth annual Harker Research Symposium. This prestigious event, which draws hundreds of attendees each year, serves to highlight the achievements of Harker students passionate about scientific research, as well as celebrate the wonders of research and innovation in Silicon Valley.
Harker students will give formal talks on the methods and results of the research they have done both at Harker and at collegiate and professional labs, much of which has earned recognition in the Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search. The audience will include not only students and parents, but also members of the scientific community. The event is also an opportunity for middle school students to present their research through poster presentations.
Exhibitors from companies such as NVIDIA, IBM, Google and Tesla will offer glimpses at both current technology and what lies ahead, with eye-catching interactive demonstrations and displays.
New this year is the chance to test drive a Tesla, and an activity for grade 5 students, who can compete in a spontaneous STEM challenge. Returning favorites include a student/teacher panel discussion on Harker’s research program and a chemistry “magic show.”
The morning keynote speaker for this year’s research symposium is Dr. Claire Max, professor of astrophysics and director of the Center for Adaptive Optics at University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the last decade, adaptive optics technology has been used to enhance the capabilities of astronomical telescopes by correcting the blurring caused by turbulence in the atmosphere. This technology also is helping further the understanding of black holes in nearby merging galaxies. Dr. Max also will discuss the applications of this optical technology in imagining the human retina.
Ilya Sukhar ’03 will be this year’s alumni speaker. After graduating with honors from Cornell University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Sukhar worked as an engineer for the online video company Ooyala before working in product and engineering at Etact, which was acquired by Salesforce. He is now the founder and CEO of Parse, whose product greatly eases the process of creating mobile apps across multiple platforms. In 2013, Facebook acquired Parse, which is still independently operated.
This year’s keynote speaker is Salman Khan, the founder and executive director of the Khan Academy (khanacademy.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing high-quality education to people all over the world, free of charge. An MIT grad with degrees in computer science, mathematics and electrical engineering as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School, Khan began tutoring his cousin in math in 2004 while working at a hedge fund based in Boston. His clientele eventually grew to 15 family members and friends, prompting him to create software that would help its users practice the concepts they were learning. He also created YouTube videos to accompany the software. By 2009, Khan’s videos were receiving tens of thousands of views each month. Khan then decided it was time to make Khan Academy a full-time occupation. Today, Khan Academy provides thousands of learning resources, including more than 100,000 exercises and 4,000 videos, on a variety of subjects. It is now accessed by more than 6 million unique users each month, making it one of the most widely used online educational resources.
For information and a detailed schedule, please visit www.harker.org/symposium.
Congratulations to senior Sreyas Misra, who has been named a finalist in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search, one of eight hailing from the Bay Area. Misra’s project, “Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-headed and Hand-held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter,” earned him a place among just 40 other students from an original pool of nearly 1,800 entrants. These students will participate in the final stage of the Intel STS in Washington, D.C. from March 6-12, where $630,000 in prizes will be awarded, including the $100,000 grand prize.
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Ten Harker seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2014 Intel Science Talent Search (STS), the second-highest number of semifinalists in the nation and just one short of Harker’s record of 11, set in 2012.
This year’s semifinalists and their projects are: Vikas Bhetanabhotla (“Identification of Satellite Galaxies around Milky Way Galactic Analogs Using Machine Learning Algorithms”), Stephanie Chen (“Globular Clusters as Tracers of Dark Matter in Virgo Cluster Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies”), Christopher Fu (“Molecular Characterization and Rapid Generation of Human Rotavirus VP6-Specific Monoclonal Antibodies”), Anika Gupta (“Novel Drug Delivery Systems Targeting Cancer Stem Cells for Next-Generation Chemotherapy”), Saachi Jain (“MicroRNA-223 Promotes Macrophage Differentiation”), Sreyas Misra (“Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-Headed and Hand-Held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter”), Preethi Periyakoil (“A Video-Assisted, Time-Lapse Analysis of the Effects of the ELF5 Transcription Factor on the Morphology and Proliferation Kinetics of Breast Cancer Cells”), Rahul Sridhar (“Understanding the Effect of Hinge Mutations on Domain-Swapping in Antiviral Lectin Cyanovirin-N”), Vikram Sundar (“Computational Analysis of Novel Drug Opportunities Using Protein-Protein Docking”) and Albert Zhao (“Oxygen Reduction Activity of Dodecyne-Functionalized AuPd Nanoparticles”).
These 10 students are among 300 nationwide who were selected from nearly 1,800 original entrants from across the country and in overseas schools. Each semifinalist will be awarded $1,000, and in order to bolster education in science, math and engineering, every semifinalist school will receive $1,000 for each student from that school named a semifinalist.
On Jan. 22, 40 of these semifinalists will be chosen to participate in the final stage of the Intel STS in Washington, D.C., where they will share their work with both the public and the scientific community, and compete for a $100,000 grand prize.
The Harker School is known for its unique student and teacher exchange programs with educational institutions around the world. But Harker’s rich global education doesn’t stop in between such visits. Throughout the school year, middle school students keep connected virtually with their foreign pals via interactive video conferences and online forums.
In grade 6, video conferences between students and their same-age buddies from Harker’s sister school in Tokyo, Tamagawa Academy K-12 & University, help build excitement for future visits. And in grades 7 and 8, two separate online forums fuel dynamic conversations between Harker students and their peers in both Kazakhstan and China. Below HNO takes a look at how Harker keeps globally connected through video conferencing in grade 6 and online forums in the older middle school grades:
Grade 6 Video Conferences
In mid-December, grade 6 students enjoyed connecting with their buddies from Tamagawa Academy during a series of interactive, game show-style videoconferences, held on the middle school campus.
“After emailing each other this past semester in their computer science class, students came face-to-face with their email buddies in a Family Feud-style game show!” reported Jennifer Walrod, director of Harker’s global education program.
“Questions (ranging from discovering favorite desserts to best after-school activities) were generated by students with a focus on interests of middle school students,” said Walrod, explaining that half of the grade 6 students participated in the conferences, with the remaining half slated for next semester.
“Designing an educational yet fun game was a very interesting task. I also had fun at the video conference talking to the Tamagawa students and playing Family Feud,” said grade 6 student Sejal Krishnan.
The video conferences set the stage for the grade 6 trip to Japan in the spring.
Grade 7 Online Poetry Forum
Last year grade 7 students in Mark Gelineau’s English class launched an online poetry forum with a school in Kazakhstan. Using the forum, Harker seventh graders connected with peers from the Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) in Kazakhstan to discuss selected poetic works.
Gelineau created the forum in conjunction with Harker alumna Lauren Gutstein, who works at the NIS school in Astana, one of seven state-funded selective schools for middle and high school age students spread throughout major cities in Kazakhstan.
Through their online postings, students from both Harker and NIS share insights and observations about posted poems. Using the forum, more than 100 students recently read and discussed both an American and a Kazakh poem about winter.
Grade 8 Online World Issues Forum
Where we live and how it affects our perspective on global issues was the topic of a recent grade 8 World Issues Forum with the World Foreign Language Middle School (WFLMS) in Shanghai. Other topics covered have included personal choices and the global ecosystem; global perspectives; issues preventing access to the global community; and leadership in today’s society.
“This is not new as we’ve been doing it for numerous years. However, it has really strengthened over the past couple years and the forum now gets hundreds of posts throughout the semester,” Walrod said.
In fact, the middle school’s annual trip to China was originally based around the grade 8 computer science class’ global issues forum. Last year the trip also incorporated the grade 7 historical component of learning about ancient China. Including seventh graders on the China trip was such a success that it will be repeated again this year.
“I really enjoyed participating in the forum with the students from WFLMS. By talking to them, I learned totally different perspectives on some things that I had never even heard before. I also learned a lot about the cultures of China. Now, I have left the class with a greater knowledge of the world than I had before,” said Megan Huynh, grade 8.
“It is indeed exciting and interesting to communicate with people from the other side of the world and the discussions are supposed to be diverse and offering an insight on both sides’ point of view,” agreed Nastya Grebin, also grade 8.
“Adding the online forum discussions to my computer science curriculum has provided a great opportunity for students to combine their technical knowledge to global issues related to the world they live in. The student’s forum discussions have been compulsory to their studies of systems that are the basis for their computer science final project applications,” noted Abigail Jospeh, Harker’s middle school computer science instructor.
The Siemens Foundation announced earlier today that grade 11 students Andrew Jin and Steven Wang have won a $40,000 team scholarship in this year’s Siemens Competition, making them the first Harker students to win a scholarship at the national finals since Harker students began entering the competition during the 2005-06 school year. The prize will be split evenly between the two students.
Another student from California, Eric Chen of San Diego, was this year’s individual grand prize winner of a $100,000 scholarship.
Congratulations to all!
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Andrew Jin and Steven Wang, both grade 11, won the team portion of the regional finals of this year’s Siemens Competition, held at the California Institute of Technology last weekend, netting them a shared scholarship of $6,000. They are now headed to the national finals, held Dec. 6-10 in Washington, D.C., where they will compete for as much as $100,000 in scholarships.
This marks Harker’s first appearance in the national finals since Harker students began entering the competition in 2005. Jin and Wang were thankful to their teachers – Anita Chetty, Gary Blickenstaff, Michael Pistacchi, Mala Raghavan and Chris Spenner – for their guidance and feedback on their project, which explored the use of computer modeling and biological experiments to more quickly find anti-cancer drug treatments.
“During the days before the competition, we made a ton of changes based on your feedback, and we were able to improve the presentation significantly,” Jin said in an email. “We couldn’t have made it this far without all your help!”
Renowned travel and nature author David Quammen appeared via Skype to a large crowd of students at Nichols Hall auditorium on Oct. 30 to discuss his experiences in writing his latest non-fiction book, “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.”
From his home in Bozeman, Mont., Quammen started by talking about his authorial origins as a fiction writer in the 1970s. He later joined the outdoors magazine “Outside” as a columnist, originally planning to contribute for just one year, which ended up being 15.
He began writing non-fiction in the 1980s, and last year released “Spillover,” his 10th non-fiction book, which covers in depth how viruses travel from humans to animals. The book tells the history and development of this study, covering such key points as the AIDs epidemic, the early-2000s SARS outbreak, the spread of diseases such as Ebola and various influenzas and more.
The book, which was in the works for several years, took Quammen to many very interesting places. He recalled one night in Bangladesh, where he was observing veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonathan Epstein as he captured fruit bats in an effort to discover how the Nipah virus was infecting the local population. The job required a hazmat suit and goggles, which were constantly fogging up and obscuring his vision, increasing his anxiety that an infected bat may bite or scratch him.
On another trip, to China, Quammen and the researcher he was with squeezed through narrow caves, also looking for bats, but this time without the hazmat suits. When Quamman asked the researcher why they were not wearing protective gear, the researcher replied that oftentimes researchers take a “calculated risk.”
“The developed world is very vulnerable,” he said, citing the SARS outbreak, which began when a woman traveling from Hong Kong brought the virus with her to Toronto. Another modern example was the occurrence of the West Nile virus in New York City in 1999.
Although developed countries have more resources to deal with these outbreaks, even in undeveloped areas these viruses can pose a significant worldwide risk, he said, because viruses become more effective at infecting humans with each new case. He then stated there was a need for more international institutions dedicated to researching how viruses in animals begin to infect humans and how to prevent outbreaks.
This need has created a growing field for young scientists. A veterinarian, he said, may return to school and earn a Ph.D. in ecology. “More and more you see this kind of expert,” he said. “And most of them are young.”
As for prevention of the spread of these disease, Quammen said the biggest reason for the spread is ecosystem disruption, such as foresting and the hunting and eating of wild animals. He said that though many peoples frequently subsist on bushmeats, and that others must be sympathetic to their needs, it is necessary to help them find alternatives to prevent the spread of animal borne viruses.
On Friday, the Siemens Foundation announced the regional finalists and semifinalists in this year’s Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Two Harker students, Steven Wang and Andrew Jin, both grade 11, were named regional finalists this year for their joint research project. Harker’s 10 regional semifinalists are: seniors Aditya Batra, Stephanie Chen, Zareen Choudhury, Varun Mohan and Srikar Pyda, and juniors Matthew Huang, Helen Wu, Stanley Xie (joint project with Helen Wu), Samyukta Yagati and Andrew Zhang. This marks the third consecutive year that Harker has had at least two regional finalists in the Siemens competition. Harker had six semifinalists and four regional finalists in 2012, and six semifinalists and two regional finalists in 2011.
In another record year for the Siemens Competition, 2,440 students took part in the 2013 competition, to which 1,559 projects were submitted. Of those, 331 semifinalists and 100 regional finalists were chosen.
Each regional finalist receives a $1,000 scholarship and advances to one of the regional competitions held in November. Winners from the regional competitions then move on to the national finals in Washington, D.C., held Dec. 6-7 at George Washington University.
In mid-June, Samantha Madala, grade 11, gave a presentation at a meeting of the Endocrine Society held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The presentation was largely the result of her own experiences with hypothyroidism, an endocrine disorder in which the thyroid gland underperforms and whose symptoms include drowsiness and a lack of focus.
Prior to starting high school, Madala excelled academically. “But when I started high school, I noticed that I had a hard time focusing in class and I always felt tired and withdrawn. My grades were affected too,” she said. “I later found out that my symptoms were caused by hypothyroidism.”
Although relieved that her condition was treatable, Madala was disturbed by the lack of awareness on hypothyroidism and other endocrine disorders. She decided to conduct a study as a first step toward gauging the global awareness of endocrine-related health problems.
Madala and researchers from the University of British Columbia, University of California, Irvine, University of California, Berkeley and the Tufts University School of Medicine created an online survey administered to adults in different age groups and levels of education. “Overall, most survey-takers had very low knowledge of hypothyroidism and other disorders, with the average percentage of correct answers ranging from 15 percent to 45 percent,” Madala said. One of the more surprising finds was that most people surveyed had either completed a college degree or were attending college.
With this data, Madala hopes to eventually make the world aware of endocrine disorders and how they can be treated. “Ultimately, I would like to create solutions to raise awareness of all disorders that can impact learning, and help students reach their academic potential, without having to be held back by health problems,” she said. To this end, she has started a nonprofit organization for students suffering from chronic illnesses. “I believe that children should not have to struggle in school, especially when their problems can be solved with simple, effective treatments.”
She has also begun work on a publication dedicated to the discussion and treatment of pediatric hypothyroidism, featuring useful information on the topic and interviews with medical professionals and patients.
In May, rising junior Andrew Jin won a second-place award in the medicine and health sciences category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, Ariz. His project, titled “Breast Cancer Prognosis through Gene Expression Profiling and Tumor Morphology,” also earned him a $1,500 prize. The American Statistical Association also honored Jin with a third-place special award, which included a $250 cash prize and a five-year school license for Harker for the JMP statistical software suite.