Tag: Science

Middle School Students Compete in DOE National Science Bowl

This year Harker middle school students competed in the Department of Energy (DOE) National Science Bowl for the first time. The annual contest aims to foster a love of math and science among the nation’s middle and high school students. In this debut appearance our middle school sent not one but three teams to compete. Each team consisted of a minimum of four students and a coach.

Harker students matched their wits against other area middle school students at the regional competition, held at National Hispanic University in San Jose.

The teams battled each other “Jeopardy”-style, where they were quizzed on their knowledge of math and science. A round-robin format was used to determine the winner in each region. The winning team from each region then went on to a national competition in Washington, D.C. Harker students did an excellent job this first time out and we look forward to seeing more students compete in the future.

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Lower School Students End School Year with Field Trips

Students at the lower school were treated to an assortment of exciting end-of-year field trips. These included the annual all-grade trips to the Exploratorium, the California Academy of Sciences, the Oakland Zoo and a special expedition to Golfland for select third- through fifth-graders.

In April, kindergarten students went on their annual adventure to the Oakland Zoo. The zoo has a variety of exhibits, with more than 650 animals for visitors to see. There are collections of geographically grouped animals, including those native to the rain forest, African savanna and California.

Every year, students in grade three are treated to a trip to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The academy includes an aquarium with live penguins, as well as a planetarium, a natural history museum and a rain forest dome. It provides students with an excellent means to learn about science and animal life in a fun and hands-on way.

The annual end-of-year field trip for students in fourth grade is a trip to the Exploratorium, also in San Francisco. This facility is famous for its interactive approach to science and art. Students get to learn about the science behind everyday actions like hitting a baseball or the growth of plants. The goal of this trip is not only to spark the children’s interest in science, but to also get them to think about how they view the world.

As a reward for their stellar picnic ticket sales, qualifying students at the lower school earn a trip to Golfland. Students in grades three through five must sell at least 100 tickets to go on the outing. The kids are allowed a day off from school where they can golf, play video games in the arcade and, weather permitting, enjoy the water slides. This year about 50 students met the criteria for the trip, which was postponed a day due to late spring rains. The students who attended had a blast and agreed that the wait for a sunny day was well worth it.

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Three Upper School Students Receive Computing Award

On June 6, students Sierra Lincoln, Gr. 9, Shreya Nathan, Gr. 11, and recent graduate Vivian Wong were recognized by the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Each received the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing.

The students were among 25 individuals from 11 Bay Area and Central Coast counties honored at a ceremony held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The award recognizes young women for their aspirations and achievements in computing-related fields. Winners also received a $250 gift card, a one-gigabyte flash card, memberships to the Computer History Museum and the Tech Museum plus an invitation to spend a day at Google.

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Students Pitch Mobile Application to Venture Capitalists

Imagine yourself driving down Saratoga Avenue, taking the usual route to the upper school campus, when suddenly the orange low-fuel sign turns on, warning that your tank is low and you need to fill up. But stopping at the nearest gas station does not guarantee the best price. You find yourself scanning the stations that flank the road, looking for the cheapest price.

With the mobile application that Harker students Shefali Netke, Gr. 12, Vivian Wong, Gr. 12, Anika Radiya-Dixit, Gr. 9, Sheridan Jones, Gr. 11 and Kristi Lui, Gr. 11, developed as part of Iridescent Learning’s Spring Technovation Challenge, searching for cheap gas prices would not slow you down.

On April 22, Iridescent held Pitch Night at Microsoft’s Mountain View office, giving students the opportunity to present their ideas in front of venture capitalists. This challenge is a collaboration between Iridescent, the not-for-profit dedicated to providing children in underserved communities with access to cutting-edge science, and Girls in Tech, an organization that aims to empower and promote women in technology.

The team placed third in the competition and was invited to attend the Women of Vision Symposium on May 12.

The five girls worked closely with industry professionals Julie Greenberg and Yasmin Khan to develop their creative mobile app. For eight weeks leading up to Pitch Night, these talented young women worked with the two mentors and participated in hands-on workshops, learning about programming, communication and business fundamentals that were essential in creating a comprehensive proposal.

They created Gas Guy’d, a mobile application that allows drivers to locate accurate, cheap gas prices with an easy-to-use interface and voice activation. Features include GPS directions, real-time prices, a favorites option and detailed station descriptions.

Serving as CEO, Netke presented a four-minute pitch to venture capitalists Katherine Barr, Adeo Ressi and Mendel Rosenblum, and all the teammates participated in a four-minute Q&A after the presentation.

Netke said that Anita Chetty, biology teacher and advisor of Women in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (WiSTEM), was instrumental in motivating the group.

“I think that all of us really learned how to work better in a team environment. We do group projects in school, but this environment was different in the sense that there was much more at stake,” Netke said. “The competition also helped a lot in seeing how much work goes into the entire process of developing an application. We did not just do the building stage or just the presentation; we built the application from scratch, developed a business plan, presented the pitch – all the steps.”

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Lower School Educator Volunteers at Children’s Discovery Museum

Kristin Giammona, elementary division head, recently volunteered at the Children’s Discovery Museum as a guest activity leader at Family Science Night in the Museum. Giammona was recommended to the event by a Harker parent who felt she would do an excellent job.

Family Science Night provides an opportunity for students to experience science in a fun and hands-on way. The theme of the night was “Toy Box Physics,” one of the museum’s more popular themes. It included an examination of simple machines and how they are present in the toys kids use everyday.

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Two Win Awards at International Science and Engineering Fair

Alex Han, Gr. 12 and Revanth Kosaraju, Gr. 10, received special recognition at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), held May 9-14 in downtown San Jose. Han won a $4,000 scholarship from the U.S. Navy and a trip to the London International Youth Science Forum, taking place July 28-Aug. 11. Kosaraju received a $500 award from the American Psychological Association.

The ISEF featured 1,600 finalists from nearly 60 countries. Han and Kosaraju won the privilege to appear at the ISEF at the Synopsys Science and Technology Championship in March; it was the first time since 2007 that Harker had two finalists representing the school. “It is a really big deal to win an award at ISEF since these represent the best projects from around the world,” said upper school science teacher Kate Schafer.

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Gr. 10 JETS Team Takes First Place Nationally

Harker was selected as the best overall national team in the “9th/10th Level” category in this year’s JETS (Junior Engineering Technical Society) competition. Coached by upper school math teacher Anthony Silk, the team of Gr. 10 students Lucy Cheng, Alexander Hsu, Revanth Kosaraju, Jeffrey Kwong, Ramya Rangan, Pavitra Rengarajan, Katie Siegel and Albert Wu won a $2,500 cash prize and  a commemorative trophy. Each member of the team received a medal and certificate for their efforts.

The Harker Gr. 9 time also fared well in the competition, placing eighth in Division 2 among 46 teams. Harker’s four 11th/12th Level teams placed fourth, fifth, 17th and 19th out of the 166 teams competing in Division 2.

More than 10,000 students from 42 states competed in this year’s competition, which tasked students with finding ways to purify water as well as assess current water purification methods. Every year, JETS holds national team and individual competitions to promote engineering and technology careers to today’s youth.

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Gr. 8 Teams Win Top Two Spots in eCybermission Contest

Two teams of Gr. 8 students were recently declared winners in the Southwest Pacific Region for this year’s eCybermission contest.

Dubbed the Dust Busters, Sharon Babu, Allen Cheng, Albert Chu and Daniel Pak won first place and each received a $3,000 savings bond. They will also travel to Baltimore in June for the National Judging Event to compete against three other teams at the same grade level. In the past five years that Harker has participated in the eCybermission competition, five teams have advanced to this level.

Vikas Bhetanabhotla, Divyahans Gupta and Brian Tuan, collectively known as Analytic Trio, won the criteria award for Application of Science, Math and Technology. The award included a $2,000 savings bond for each member of the team.

Every year, schools from across the country compete in the web-based eCybermission competition, which has students solve problems in their community by utilizing their skills with science, math and technology.

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Stanford Researchers Partner with Harker to Study Virus Networking

Reprinted from the Harker Quarterly March 2010 issue

On Jan. 14, the tables turned at the upper school campus. The students, typically collecting awards at Intel and Siemens  Science competitions and presenting their own research at the annual and upcoming Harker Research Symposium (see December Harker Quarterly), became the subjects for a cutting-edge research study conducted by Stanford University.

 The collaboration began in the fall of 2008, when biologist and principal researcher Dr. Marcel Salathé contacted Katherine Schafer, biology and research teacher at Harker. After meeting with Schafer, Salathé knew that Harker would be a great place to run the study and that Schafer would be a great partner in the project.

  “It’s … very important that everyone is excited about the research and the project,” Salathé said, “and after talking to a few teachers and students it became clear that Harker would be a very good place to do this.”

 “There is no data of such detail about human contact networks at this scale, especially at schools,” Salathé said, “so the data will  be the first of its kind, which is always a very exciting prospect in science.”

 The data will be used to create a detailed contact network and Salathé and his team will run epidemic simulations on this established network to help advance understanding of how diseases spread through human interactions and, potentially, use the conclusions to improve epidemic control within schools.

 Setting up the research took a year’s worth of preparation and two trial runs to work out kinks, but the experiment will offer new insight into the spread of viruses. For a day, students, faculty and staff wore wireless devices, called motes, around their necks, and stationary motes were mounted on the walls of most classrooms. These low-powered sensory devices logged interactions with each other through weak radio signal detection

 To properly set up the research, Harker forwarded a letter from the researchers to parents explaining the project. Then, Salathé and colleagues Philip Levis, assistant professor of computer science, and James Holland Jones, assistant professor of anthropology, provided details at a schoolwide assembly the day before the data collection to stress the importance of student involvement in the research.

 The study is a marriage between Stanford’s biology, anthropology and computer science departments and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of major research to Harker students. Harker is the only school participating in the study and the participation reflects the scientific spirit fostered on campus.

“One of the ideas [for the assembly] was to try and give a little bit of a feel for the different disciplinary perspectives and how it comes together in a single coherent project,” Jones said. Schafer also stressed the importance of reminding students to pursue multiple interests.

“One of the goals of this assembly, in addition to learning about the study, was to get the kids thinking about the fact that having lots of different talents is going to help them a lot down the line,” Schafer said. “Having knowledge of computer science and biology and all of these other things could potentially be a huge benefit for them in their careers and in their lives in general.”

Students were given the opportunity to expand their research interests by providing feedback and working closely with the researchers to determine the best possible way to extract data. Salathé’s team initially thought self-logged data would be sufficient and tested this possibility with Schafer’s research club.

The students in the club were given journals to record their interactions throughout a school day to test the method, but returns were short of the mark. “We then switched to the advanced version of motes, and quite a few students helped us test that idea,” Salathé said.

 Andrea Lincoln, Gr. 12, participated in the study and coincidentally did research at Boston University last summer using wireless sensor networks (WSN) similar to the motes used in Stanford’s study. Lincoln thought the experiment served as a worthy introduction to the vast world of research.

“Given the huge percentage of Harker students who are considering research as a possible career, I believe it is valuable for us to have an introduction,” Lincoln said. “Perhaps seeing the WSN research will convince some students to look into research internships.”

Almost 800 motes were distributed across campus and roughly 6.5 million pieces of raw data were collected. Both Schafer and Salathé said the day went incredibly smoothly.

 “This is in large part because we were so well prepared,” Salathé said.

 The entire process was also Schafer’s chance to get involved in research again. After studying the population ecology of stomatopod crustaceans and pygmy octopuses on coral reefs in Belize for her doctoral dissertation, Schafer said the Stanford research project contrasted significantly from the type of research she did as a field biologist.

 Salathé is pleased with the whole data gathering process and results should be available in April. “I think we would do it pretty much exactly the same way if we were to do it again,” he noted, giving full credit for the successful effort to Schafer.

 “She was excited from the beginning and is the main reason why this Harker-Stanford collaboration has worked out so well,” he said. “It couldn’t have been done without her.”

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Research Symposium Keynote Speakers Inspire Students

The 2010 “Technology for Life” research symposium, held Saturday, April 10, in Nichols Center, featured two prominent keynote speakers who have propelled their scientific backgrounds into careers with global impact:

Dr. William McClure, a noted plastic surgeon and humanitarian, is a partner at Napa Valley Plastic Surgery, Inc. A graduate of the University of California-San Diego medical school and Stanford University in plastic and general surgical training, McClure has served as chief of surgery at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa. McClure’s presentation, however, focused on his volunteer work with the group Interplast, doing reconstructive surgery on children in developing countries.

Over 25 years and through 55 missions in 14 countries, McClure has repaired cleft lips and palates, neurofibromas and burn scars. Such deformities often doom a child to a life of shame or debilitating impairment.  Referring to  the cultural superstitions around cleft lips, a deformity in one out of 100 births, McClure said, “The sad part is it takes only 30 to 45 minutes to repair the deformity and change this child’s life.”

McClure told his audience, “I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in high school.” But then a math teacher with a burn scar on one side of his head stirred “my first interest in plastic surgery.” During residency, he was assigned to a plastic surgery rotation with the opportunity to take care of children in Mexico. “Something clicked. That changed my life,” said McClure, who saw how a handful of instruments and 35 minutes could change the life of a child with a cleft lip.

The longer-term solution to surgical needs, however, is training physicians and nurses in developing countries to do the operations themselves. “Surgery is a skill,” said McClure. “You learn it by doing it and we teach by doing. If each trip I can train a physician, we get tremendous leverage.”

McClure, who has already traveled to Laos this year and has a trip  to Mexico planned, has received several awards for his philanthropic work, and in 2005 met the Dalai Lama. His “life’s journey” advice to students considering medical careers is threefold:  Look to the future while living in the moment, be willing to change course, and plant seeds today. He also encouraged everyone to get involved. “It doesn’t take wealth, academic standing or special skills to make a difference. They secret key is compassion,” he noted. “The Dalai Lama says that if we want to be happy in our life, we have to practice compassion.”

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Dr. Christopher Gilbert is the vice president of science and technology at Keystone Dental, Inc. A graduate of the University of California-Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University in materials science, Gilbert has worked with McKinsey & Company, consulting with global biopharmaceutical clients on acquisitions and commercial strategy, and with Hologic, Inc.

Gilbert credited his early career inspiration to his father’s interest in bad science fiction, where fantastical micro-surgical tools and bionic eyes were part of the stories. Some of those medical devices, such as surgical robots and ocular implants, are now reality. Speaking about high-tech therapeutic devices such as pacemakers and small equipment like intravenous pumps, Gilbert said, “Medical technology has revolutionized health care since the 1960s. Discoveries improve lives; they change lives.”

With Hologic, Inc., Gilbert led the U.S. approval and launch of the Adiana permanent contraceptive device. A $210 billion industry with an expected growth rate of 6.5 percent, the medical device market comprises 25 percent of U.S. health care expenditures.  Competitive and constantly changing, the highly regulated field interweaves the complexities of business, government, patients, physicians and advocacy groups. Gilbert encouraged students to take a variety of courses and take advantage of biomedical and business departments in college. “You need to interface with a wide range of people,” Gilbert advised.

Gilbert’s career began when a random application to a consulting firm ultimately led to his current position. “Believe in the extreme importance of serendipity in your career,” he said. “What kind of skills do you develop to take advantage of things that fall in your lap?” Gilbert said that the Bay Area economy encourages risks and accepts failure, out of which comes opportunity. “Failure will happen. It takes 10 to 12 years to take a product to market, and many of these fail.”

Noting the interdisciplinary nature of the field, Gilbert counseled, “Many of the skills you are now developing in science will serve you in the future. Many of the problem-solving skills I developed in the sciences have served me well in the business world.”

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