Harker had a solid showing in the 2017 Physics Bowl, organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Rising seniors Swapnil Garg, Jimmy Lin and Neelesh Ramachandran, and rising junior Cindy Wang were among the top 100 scorers in Division 2 (comprising second-year physics students). Out of a possible 40 points, Garg scored 28, Lin and Neelesh each scored 25, and Wang scored 23. The average score for Division 2 participants was 13.1.
With a team total of 122 points, Harker took third place in Division 2, tying with Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which placed second due to having the highest-scoring student.
The Physics Bowl, which this year included more than 7,100 students from around the world, is a 45-minute, multiple-choice exam consisting of 40 questions on topics commonly covered in high school physics courses.
Harker students had another stellar year at the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship, which took place in late March. Two students – junior Amy Jin and recent graduate Manan Shah ’17 – were grand prize winners, earning them trips to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. The Synopsys Championship website includes the full list of middle and upper school winners, which also can be found below.
Middle School
Arohee Bhoja, grade 8: $250 to the winning student or team in middle school bioscience, Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; middle school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate, Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; honorable mention, biological science and engineering category.
Sidra Xu, grade 8: Middle school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate, Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; second award, biological science and engineering category.
Russell Yang, grade 8: Middle school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate, Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; second award, biological science and engineering category.
Alexandra Baeckler, grade 8: Nominated to compete envelope, Broadcom MASTERS – 8th Grade; first award, biological science and engineering category; certificate of achievement, NASA Earth System Science Award.
Ankita Kundu, grade 8: Middle school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate; Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; honorable mention, biological science and engineering category.
Akshay Manglik, grade 8: Nominated to compete envelope, Broadcom MASTERS – 8th Grade; first award, physical science and engineering category.
Elizabeth Szeto, grade 8: Middle school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate; Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; honorable mention, biological science and engineering category.
Upper School
Akhil Arun, grade 11: Second award, biological science and engineering category; ASEI Silicon Valley emerging technology certificate of achievement and membership to American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin Award.
Cynthia Chen, grade 9: Second award, physical science and engineering category; $100 first place, certificate of achievement and letter, Inez M. Lechner Award.
Karena Kong, grade 11: Honorable mention student award, $50 and certificate of achievement, Association for Computing Machinery, San Francisco Bay Area Professional Chapter; first award, physical science and engineering category.
Eileen Li, grade 9: BBC Microbit development kit, TechLab Education.
Millie Lin, grade 11: Certificate and nomination to enter 2018 Sustainability Soutions Festival in Arizona, Arizona State University Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives; certificate of achievement, American Psychological Association; honorable mention, certificate of achievement and goody bag, Association for Women in Science, Palo Alto Chapter.
Emily Liu, grade 9: BBC Microbit development kit, TechLab Education.
Maya Shukla, grade 9: First award, biological science and engineering category.
Sahana Srinivasan, grade 11: Second award, biological science and engineering category; ASEI Silicon Valley emerging technology certificate of achievement and membership to American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin Award.
Krish Kapadia, grade 10, and Anjay Saklecha, grade 10: $500 to the winning student or team in high school bioscience, Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; high school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate; Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; first award, RRI biological science and engineering category.
Katherine Tian, grade 10: First award, biological science and engineering category.
Kevin Xu, grade 10, and Raymond Xu ’17: Certificate of achievement, American Psychological Association.
Katherine Zhang, grade 10: First award, biological science and engineering category.
Kaushik Shivakumar, grade 10: Honorable mention, biological science and engineering category; certificate and nomination to enter 2018 Sustainability Soutions Festival in Arizona, Arizona State University Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives.
Shreyas Chandrashekaran, grade 11: Honorable mention, biological science and engineering category; certificate of achievement, United States Public Health Service.
Shaya Zarkesh, grade 11: Honorable mention student award: $50 and certificate of achievement, Association for Computing Machinery, San Francisco Bay Area Professional Chapter; honorable mention, physical science and engineering category.
Jerry Chen, grade 11: High school – one packet with letter, certificate of achievement, ONR Medallion and form for $50 gift card, United States Navy and Marine Corps.
Amy Dunphy, grade 11: IEEE Electro-Technology $50 gift card and a certificate, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Amy Jin, grade 11: Grand prize – best of championship, physical sciences, trip to Intel ISEF and plaque, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Association board of directors awards, high school; first award, RRI physical science and engineering category; $100 and a certificate of achievement, IBM award.
Cameron Jones, grade 10: Second award, biological science and engineering category.
Arnav Joshi, grade 9: High school finalist certificate and Amazon.com gift certificate; Synopsys Outreach Foundation n+1 Prize; second award, biological science and engineering category.
Rishab Gargeya ’17: $100 first prize, Morgan Lewis; second award, RRI physical science and engineering category.
Anastasiya Grebin, grade 11: First award, biological science and engineering category.
Jimmy Lin, grade 11: First award, RRI biological science and engineering category.
Sandip Nirmel ’17: Second award, RRI physical science and engineering category; certificate of achievement, American Meteorological Society.
Evani Radiya-Dixit ’17: Second award, RRI biological science and engineering category; ASEI Silicon Valley emerging technology certificate of achievement award and Membership to American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin Award.
Manan Shah ’17: Grand prize, best of championship, biological sciences, trip to Intel ISEF and plaque, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Association, board of directors awards, high school; first award, RRI biological science and engineering category; $100 and a certificate of achievement, IBM Award; ASEI Silicon Valley emerging technology certificate of achievement award and membership to American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin Award.
Arjun Subramaniam ’17: Grand prize alternate, biological sciences, trip to state science fair and plaque, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Association, board of directors awards, high school; second award, RRI biological science and engineering category; ASEI Silicon Valley emerging technology certificate of achievement award and membership to American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin, American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin Award.
Maddie Huynh, grade 9: First place award, $150 cash and certificate of achievement, American Society of Civil Engineers, San Jose branch.
Michelle Kwan, grade 9: First place award, $150 cash and certificate of achievement, American Society of Civil Engineers, San Jose branch.
Carolyn Lu, grade 9: First place award, $150 cash and certificate of achievement, American Society of Civil Engineers, San Jose branch.
Two Harker students won awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held last week in Los Angeles.
Junior Amy Jin’s project, titled “Deep Learning-Based Automated Tool Detection and Analysis of Surgical Videos to Assess Operative Skill,” won her a Second Award in the robotics and intelligent machines category. She also won a First Geno Award, which included a $1,000 cash prize, from the Samvid Education Foundation.
Recent graduate Manan Shah ’17 won a Second Award in the computational biology and bioinformatics category for his project, titled “Deep Learning Assessment of Tumor Proliferation in Histopathological Images for Categorical and Molecular Breast Cancer Severity Diagnosis.” The project also earned him an honorable mention from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Both students won their trips to Intel ISEF at the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship in March, where they each received grand prizes.
Update: Here is the playlist of videos of speakers at the Harker Research Symposium. Topics ranged from AI to VR/ML to rockets! Students who were finalists in various science contests presented their research and the panel discussion was an informational presentation of the scientific research opportunities at Harker, geared towards younger students who are considering pursuing research in the near future. Enjoy!
Harker’s large community of science enthusiasts gathered at the upper school campus on April 15 for the 2017 Harker Research Symposium. Early arrivals packed the Nichols Hall auditorium for a talk by leading artificial intelligence expert Fei-Fei Li, who spoke about advancements in developing visual intelligence for computers.
Attendees then filled the Nichols Hall atrium, examining the many corporate exhibits, from companies including Google, IBM, Xilinx, Nvidia and Titanium Falcon. They later made their way to the quad for the lunchtime chemistry magic show, staged by Andrew Irvine, who awed the crowd with several spectacular chemical reactions.
This year’s alumni speaker was Evan Maynard ’09, who now works at Blue Origin as a propulsion development engineer. Maynard discussed his current work in making spaceflight more affordable, as well as the development of reusable rockets.
Throughout the day, Harker students presented their work at breakout sessions, detailing research they had done in a variety of scientific fields, including astronomy, medicine and climatology. At the upper school gym, visitors listened attentively to the many middle school students who gave poster presentations.
The afternoon keynote was delivered by Achin Bhowmik, vice president and general manager of Intel’s perceptual computing group. His talk covered technological advancements that have enabled machines to more closely sense and interact with the world around them.
This year’s symposium also included three very special student talks by Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists Evani Radiya-Dixit, Arjun Subramaniam and Manan Shah, all grade 12. The students shared specifics of the research that earned them their impressive accolades.
Following their presentations, Radiya-Dixit, Subramaniam and Shah were part of a panel discussion that included science department chair Anita Chetty, physics teacher Chris Spenner, juniors Amy Jin and Rajiv Movva and senior Sandip Nirmel. The panelists discussed Harker’s many opportunities for science research, before bringing the event to a close.
On Feb. 11, Harker’s Science Bowl team won the regional competition held at the Stanford Linear Accelerator’s National Accelerator Laboratory. Senior Venkat Sankar and juniors Rajiv Movva, Shaya Zarkesh, Swapnil Garg and Derek Yen now move on to the national competition, to be held in Washington, D.C., April 27-May 1. Yen filled in for Arjun Subramaniam, grade 12, who could not compete due to a family obligation. Per the rules of the National Science Bowl, Yen will be part of the team that competes at nationals.
Organized by the U.S. Department of Energy since 1991, the National Science Bowl has teams of students compete against one another in a Q&A format similar to television game shows. Questions deal with a variety of topics, including biology, physics and math.
Nice articles from the Mercury News and Stanford on the win!
On Feb. 6, several members of Harker WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) headed to the lower school for a first-ever STEM Buddies event at that campus.
The upper school students set up several stations with chemistry activities, including making silly putty, experimenting with milk and paint, and using a ProScope. “My favorite part of the visit was working with the kids, because I could see how much fun they were having,” said senior Judy Pan, who helped run the silly putty station.
STEM Buddies began in 2014 as a way to increase interest in STEM learning among Harker’s younger students, starting with visits to the preschool. “In the future,” Pan said, “we hope to expand STEM Buddies to have more frequent visits to the lower school and preschool.”
Seniors Evani Radiya-Dixit, Arjun Subramaniam and Manan Shah were selected as three of the 40 national finalists in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search, the Society for Science & the Public announced this morning. These three finalists represent the most from any school in the country, and are among three of five finalists hailing from the Bay Area. This number also ties the Harker record of three finalists set in 2015.
The students will be headed to Washington, D.C., in March for the final competition, where $1.8 million in prizes will be up for contention. During their visit, they will have the opportunity to meet with national leadership and present their work to the National Geographic Society.
—-
Nine Harker students were among the 300 scholars named today in the 2017 Regeneron Science Talent Search (formerly the Intel Science Talent Search). Seniors Kai Ang, Angela Kim, Sandip Nirmel, Srivatsav Pyda (not pictured), Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Scott Song and Arjun Subramaniam made up the largest group of scholars from a single California high school and tied with New York’s Jericho High School and Maryland’s Montgomery Blair High School for the largest number from a single school in the nation.
Each student will receive a $2,000 cash prize, and an additional $2,000 will be awarded to Harker as one of the schools that produced this year’s STS scholars.
On Jan. 24, the Society for Science & the Public will announce this year’s 40 STS finalists, who will travel to Washington, D.C., in March to compete for $1.8 million in prizes.
Last month, Kate Schafer’s marine biology students took part in the Shark Fin Summits, in-class events that had students deliberate and come to a consensus on a recent piece of legislation regarding the sale of shark fins. A separate summit was held for each period of the class.
Schafer was inspired to hold the summits after seeing library director Sue Smith’s presentation on infographics at a teacher orientation meeting early in the school year. It also presented an opportunity for Schafer to bring multiple disciplines into her classroom. “I have been interested in finding ways to give students an exposure to interdisciplinary learning, and this was a fantastic opportunity for that,” she said. “Many students in our debrief expressed how much they appreciated having what felt like a real world experience, and said it got them thinking about possible careers that would cross different fields.”
Students represented each of the interest groups with a stake in the legislation – environmentalists, the fishing and restaurant industries, animal rights activists, cultural organizations and the ecotourism industry. Each representative gave presentations that were created following weeks of exhaustive research. In the end, the groups agreed “that an organization of stakeholders would regulate the capture and sale of shark fins,” said upper school librarian Lauri Vaughan, who developed the summit with Schafer.
Learning, innovation and design director Dan Hudkins moderated the first summit, while history teacher Damon Halback moderated the second. Each had different approaches to facilitating discussion, “but both were amazing and highly successful in terms of creating amazing learning experiences for the kids,” Vaughan said. “Both were able to weave in the basics of civics and legislative process while guiding a very complicated discussion.”
Schafer said the students learned many valuable lessons about the process of discussing and making decisions on legislation. “I think that the students were all struck by how difficult it can be for people with different stakes in an issue to come to a consensus,” she noted. “We were clear from the beginning that this wasn’t a debate and that there would be no winner.”
Raymond Banke, grade 10, recently received a distinguished honorable mention in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Student Contest. The contest, which received more than 2,100 submissions from nearly 70 countries, recognizes and rewards the work of middle and high school students who bring awareness to issues impacting the health of the world’s oceans.
Banke’s piece, titled “Protection from the Sun?” was submitted to the art category. As a distinguished honorable mention winner, Banke was awarded a prize of $250.
In addition, upper school science teacher Kate Schafer, who acted as Banke’s sponsor during the contest, received a sponsor recognition award. Congratulations!
Manan Shah, grade 12, was awarded second place in the individual category at the national Siemens Competition award ceremony in Washington, D.C., this morning! His win brings a $50,000 scholarship. The ceremony was live-streamed from Washington. Anita Chetty, science department chair noted, “We have not achieved this level in the individual category before. I join our entire K-12 team in celebrating this outstanding achievement for our school!” Heartiest congratulations to Manan!
UPDATE: Nov. 7, 2016
In early November, the Siemens Foundation announced that senior Manan Shah is a national finalist in the 2016 Siemens Competition. Shah’s work – a computational model designed to speed up and increase the accuracy of assessing the severity and growth of breast cancer tumors – won him top individual honors and a $3,000 scholarship.
Shah now moves on to the final stage of the competition in Washington, D.C., which will take place in early December. A total of $500,000 in scholarships will be distributed to winners, and two contestants will be awarded the top prize of $100,000
The Siemens Foundation announced on Oct. 20 that Harker senior Manan Shah and juniors Randy Zhao and Rajiv Movva were named regional finalists in this year’s Siemens Competition. These three students will compete in November for a chance to move on to the final stage of the competition in Washington, D.C. One of the country’s most prestigious science competitions, the Siemens Competition rigorously evaluates individual and team research projects submitted by high school students and awards more than $600,000 in scholarships through regional and national events.
Earlier this week, 19 Harker students were named Siemens semifinalists, the most of any school in California. More than 1,600 projects were submitted for the 2016 competition, and 498 students were named semifinalists. Harker’s semifinalists make up 3.8% of the total.
Harker’s semifinalists for 2016 are Rishab Gargeya, Joyce Huang, Nikhil Manglik, Connie Miao, Sandip Nirmel, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Scott Song and Arjun Subramaniam, all grade 12; and Akhil Arun, Jerry Chen, Amy Jin, Jimmy Lin, Rajiv Movva, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Xie, Kevin Xu, Shaya Zarkesh and Randy Zhao, all grade 11.
“Amazing process and outcomes from our powerhouse science departments,” said Chris Nikoloff, head of school.
Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school, noted the high number of student submissions to the competition (40 in all) and said, “It is great to see such participation and involvement in research. Thank you to all science teachers who contribute to that love of science and curiosity.”
Anita Chetty, upper school science chair, recognized the efforts of the science faculty at the lower and middle schools, exclaiming, “The upper school science department celebrates with our amazing colleagues in the lower school who lay the foundation and the middle school that develops our farm team!”