In mid-May, junior Allison Jia was named one of two winners of the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair! Jia’s project, which studied proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases, won her a $50,000 prize! It also was named Best in Category for cell and molecular biology and won a First Award, earning Jia an additional $5,000 and $1,000, respectively.
Senior Ruhi Sayana also did well at the fair, winning a $10,000 scholarship from the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association for her project in the biomedical and health sciences category, in which she also won a $1,000 Third Award from Intel ISEF and a $500 Second Award from the Ashtavadhani Vidwan Ambati Subbaraya Chetty Foundation. In the computational biology and informatics category, junior Cynthia Chen received a Third Award of $1,000. All three students won trips to the Intel ISEF at the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science & Technology Championship in March.
Jia’s efforts were writtten up in several publications:
Senior Logan Bhamidipaty was recently awarded a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), which funds a full academic year abroad for students studying languages judged as important by the State Department. Following graduation, Bhamidipaty plans to take a gap year to study Mandarin in Beijing before matriculating to Stanford.
Bhamidipaty also was recognized last month with a Congressional Award for his volunteer work with the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, and as an immigration intern with Catholic Charities USA. He also was honored for his devotion to becoming fluent in Mandarin, and for studying the history and culture of Japan’s Kansai region during the country’s Edo period. Bhamidipaty is scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C., in June for a special ceremony attended by awardees and members of the U.S. Congress.
Amy Jin ’18 drew a fine accolade from the City of San Jose via Councilmember Chappie Jones, who, along with Mayor Sam Liccardo, presented her with a commendation yesterday.
The midday meeting, held in council chambers, celebrated Jin for being named one of five students nationwide to receive the Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing from the Computer Science Teachers Association in March.
Jones, who represents the city council district in which Harker resides, noted, “Amy Jin just graduated from high school and she is already proving to be such an accomplished young person. I was honored to present Amy with a commendation at City Council for being 1 of 5 students in the nation to win the Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing.”
In describing her work, Jin said, “Every year, 7 million patients suffer surgical complications, many of which are caused by poor operative skill due to lack of individualized training and feedback. Improving these surgical outcomes means evaluating surgeon performance, a time-consuming process requiring expert supervision. Thus, I developed a deep-learning approach to automatically assess operative technique, functioning as a ‘coach’ for surgeons.
“I leveraged a convolutional neural network to teach computers to classify and localize surgical instruments in videos in real time. Increasing accuracy for tool presence detection by 28 percent and tracking instrument locations, my approach enabled rich analysis of surgical performance. It expedites surgical skill assessment through automated extraction of visual and quantitative metrics, such as tool usage patterns and trajectories, movement range and motion economy. My results have been validated by surgeons, setting the stage for building a context-aware system that can assist surgeons during procedures and provide targeted feedback.”
Jin’s other recognition includes a best paper award at the 2017 Machine Learning for Health Workshop at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference, and being named a Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar. Jin is also a John Near Endowment recipient and a National Merit Scholarship awardee. She plays classical violin and has performed at Carnegie Hall. Read more in this Harker News story. https://staging.news.harker.org/senior-amy-jin-one-of-five-in-the-country-to-win-cutler-bell-prize-in-high-school-computing/
On Tuesday, senior Jacqueline He was named a 2018 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, becoming the sixth student from Harker to earn Presidential Scholar recognition in the school’s history. He, who also won a national gold medal in this year’s Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, selected English teacher Nicholas Manjoine to be recognized as a distinguished teacher.
About 5,200 students qualified for the program, based on a variety of achievements, including outstanding scores on College Board SAT and ACT exams, success in the National YoungArts Foundation’s YoungArts competition and nominations. The Commission on Presidential Scholars then selected 20 Presidential Scholars in the Arts based on artistic achievement, personal characteristics, and leadership and service activities.
As one of this year’s Presidential Scholars, He is eligible to attend a special ceremony in Washington, D.C. on June 24.
Harker business and entrepreneurship student Roma Gandhi, though only in grade 9, is set to manage a household budget, having won a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block in its annual Budget Challenge. Gandhi was one of only 10 winners out of 180,000 students nationwide who participated in the challenge. Gandhi collected her oversized check from H&R Block district general manager Marilyn Raisor in front of her cheering classmates in mid-May.
“This is very, very impressive,” said Raisor. “This challenge teaches you how to set aside money for the monthly things, and also for the fun things.”
Gandhi allotted 15 minutes per evening and more time on weekends to keep up with the challenge. “I did put in a lot of effort,” she said.
“The first thing I learned is the value of money, how to budget and how to manage your money,” said Gandhi. “I feel like that is really useful. Before, I didn’t really have a grasp on that. Every time I’d go shopping, my parents would tell me to have a budget and I’d be like, ‘yeah.’ Now I’m more aware of costs, and self-conscious about having a budget every time I go out.”
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!”
Jonathan Ma was today named a finalist in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search. As one of 40 finalists selected from more than 1,750 initial entrants, Ma will travel to Washington, D.C. in March for the final stage of competition, where more than $1 million in prizes will be awarded.
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Four Harker seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, the Society for Science announced Wednesday. The students and their projects are as follows:
Vineet Kosaraju: Rational RNA Riboswitch Design through a Massive Open Laboratory
Sophia Luo: Integrative Multi-Cohort Analysis of Preeclamptic Placenta Identifies Perturbation of the P53 Pathway, Similarity to Certain Cancer Subtypes and Clinically Relevant Drugs
Jonathan Ma: Genomics-Based Cancer Drug Response Prediction Through the Adaptive Elastic Net
Sadhika Malladi: Application of EMDomics to Identify Age-Associated Expression and Treatments in Cancer
More than 1,750 students from 512 high schools entered this year’s contest. Of those, 300 were selected as semifinalists and each received a $1,000 award. In addition, each student’s school also received $1,000. The 40 finalists, who will compete in Washington, D.C., will be announced on Jan. 20.
The San Jose Mercury News mentioned the four semifinalists and last year’s win by Harker grade Andrew Jin ’15 in their coverage of the contest.