Last week, Forbes’ Steven Savage published a story featuring Tara Chandra ’06’s company, Here We Flo, as one of three women-run companies selling plant-based consumer products to help reduce the use of plastics. Chandra and co-founder Susan Allen established Here We Flo, a feminine hygiene product company, in 2017 after meeting while pursuing master’s degrees at the London School of Economics. Here We Flo launched in the United States in 2020 and currently has three product lines.
Three women from Harker were honored by the Davidson Institute in its annual awards. Natasha Maniar ’19 and Cynthia Chen, grade 12, were named 2019 Davidson Fellow Laureates, while Ruhi Sayana ’19 received an honorable mention. Maniar’s award is in the technology category, while Chen’s and Sayana’s awards are in the science category. The two fellows each will receive a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to Washington, D.C., to receive their awards.
Chen’s project is titled “Decoding Neural Networks: Novel Computational Methods to Discover Anti-Tumor B Cell Receptor Binding Motifs.” Her Davidson summary reads: “Cynthia’s study is the first to provide a framework for interpreting the motif patterns learned by deep learning models trained on protein sequence data. Deep neural networks have achieved great success in diagnosing diseases, but they remain black boxes: scientists are often unable to clearly explain how a model arrives at its decision or which features matter most. To address this, Cynthia developed computational methods to uncover the patterns learned by a deep neural network that predicts cancer types based on B cell receptor (BCR) sequences. By decoding this model, she identified and validated 65 tumor-specific BCR binding motifs for 13 cancer types, a discovery that could guide future synthesis of antibody drugs for targeted cancer treatments.” Read more about Chen’s efforts here.
Maniar’s project is titled “MapAF: Deep Learning to Improve Therapy of Complex Human Heart Rhythm Abnormalities” and, according to the Davidson site, she has “developed a computational approach to identify sources of atrial fibrillation (AF). Despite affecting more than 33 million people worldwide, diagnostic imaging of electrical conduction through the heart remains relatively subjective and continues to rely heavily on visual interpretation by experts. Natasha addressed this as a two-fold problem. She first developed an algorithm to analyze the heart’s chaotic electrical signals and then interpreted those results using her computational tool. Her code identified the AF sources inside the heart with greater accuracy than trained experts. This tool improves AF treatment by streamlining and standardizing the catheter ablation procedure, making it globally accessible.” Read more about Maniar here.
Sayana’s project, titled “Precision Care for Leukemia: Discovery of Novel Therapeutics for High-Risk ALL via Epigenetic and Computational Transcriptome Profiling,” already earned her one of the 40 finalist slots in the Regeneron Science Talent Search in early 2019. Maniar also was a finalist. In addition, Sayana was a grand prize winner in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship, held in March. Chen was also a grand prize winner. Last but not least, Sayana earned a $10,000 scholarship as an Intel Foundation Young Scientist from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Read more about Sayana here and search the names of all three at news.harker.org to see the many science prizes these exceptional women have earned in their budding careers!
Two Harker alumni were given Dean’s Awards for Academic Excellence by Wharton/University of Pennsylvania School of Undergraduates this spring. Savi Joshi and Vedant Thyagaraj, who both graduated from Harker in 2015, received the awards.
Joshi was awarded for service to the University of Pennsylvania and/or the greater Philadelphia community. “Savi was recognized with this award for her tremendous efforts in teaching over 150 people about healthy eating in the greater Philadelphia community,” said Lee Kramer, director of student life at Wharton.
“She worked with our Netter Center and the Vetri Community Partnership to create a program that allows undergraduates to learn healthy eating with accessible produce so that they in turn can then teach the local community and younger students about healthier eating,” he added. “During her time at Penn, Savi also served as the co-chair of the Wharton Alumni Relations Council and as a facilitator of the Wharton Roundtables, a peer-to-peer discussion group.
Thyagaraj, who graduated from Wharton’s life science management dual-degree program in May, was presented with the Dean’s Award for Innovation for his remarkable career at the school. His many achievements at Wharton included strong academic performance, serving as president of the Penn Undergraduate Biotechnology Society and acting as a research assistant for the Wharton Global Family Alliance. Along with fellow Penn/Wharton alumni, Thyagaraj also founded Ride-Health, a transportation technology company that provides low-income, elderly and disabled patients with transportation to medical care by integrating with ridesharing providers such as Uber and Lyft and other modes of transport. Ride-Health currently has 12 full-time employees and operates in 25 states.
“We are very proud of both Savi and Vedant!” said Kramer. “They have both accomplished so much here at Wharton and Penn and they leave a great legacy here. In addition to all of their accomplishments, they were amazing students and I really enjoyed working with both of them during their four years at Wharton.”
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
Harker alumna Denzil (Sikka) Eden ‘09 was honored this week as one of Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award winners for 2019. Eden earned many accolades while at Harker, including being named an Intel (now Regeneron) Science Talent Search semifinalist.
Eden earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. In between, she worked at Microsoft for three years while teaching computer science at Foothill College in Los Altos and San Francisco State University.
Eden was working for San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo as his office’s technology and innovation advisor until this month, when she delved full time into her startup, Smarty A.I., an artificial intelligence executive-assistant product. Read all about her in the SVBJ article!
This article originally appeared in the summer 2019 issue of Harker Magazine.
When Tiffany Duong ’02 signed up on a whim for a scuba diving trip to the Galapagos Islands, she didn’t know it would transform her life. At the time, she was working endless hours at a law firm in Los Angeles and thought the trip would be a distraction from her work-hard, play-hard life.
It was among the wild blue ocean currents that she literally took the plunge and committed to changing her life. She worked up the courage to quit her job as a lawyer and set out to follow her passion to protect the planet. And she’s never been happier.
“I’m three years into my one-year sabbatical, and it’s just turned into my life because I keep ‘failing better’ and being OK with it,” said Duong with a bright smile on her face. “I am choosing more what is right for me (path B, C, D) vs. what I ‘should’ be doing (path A). So, even when I fail, I learn something or meet someone that pushes me forward, so I still feel like I’m moving in the right direction. And I’m having so much more fun doing it.”
From fieldwork at a biodiversity research camp in the Peruvian Amazon to tagging sharks by scuba diving at Cocos Island in Costa Rica, Duong is fearless about pursuing a life with purpose.
“It honestly doesn’t surprise me that Tiffany chose to leave the legal profession to throw herself into an environmental cause, given her independence and integrity,” said Spanish teacher Abel Olivas, who helped Duong fall in love with the language. “I’ll never forget the strength she demonstrated when, as salutatorian, she spoke at baccalaureate her senior year. She included a reference to the recent death of her father. Her raw but very eloquent comments made us cry and shook us on a very deep, human level. She turned her loss into urgent poetry, reminding us not to take the people we love for granted.”
Duong started at Harker in first grade and graduated with the inaugural upper school class. She played volleyball, ran track and field, served as ASB president and was editor-in-chief of the yearbook.
She remembers in elementary school when Mrs. Peterson, the art teacher, encouraged them to use anything and do anything because “there are no rules in art,” which gave her permission to try anything. This early lesson has guided Duong around the globe.
“I remember I came back to Harker after I graduated and was walking down the hall and seeing flyers for trips to Costa Rica on one side and for the Green Team on the other, and I realized in that moment that I am who I am because of Harker. I’m an international tree hugger because of Harker,” laughed Duong. “I always knew Harker prepared me academically, but I didn’t realize how much it has shaped my passions and goals.”
After Duong graduated from Harker, she attended UCLA, where she studied international development and Italian. While she struggled to crystallize her career path, protecting the planet was a priority to her, so decided to go to law school to establish some force behind her passion. And that she did, becoming an associate with law firms specializing in renewable energy. Although this work was intellectually challenging, she didn’t feel like she was making enough of an impact, which led to the scuba trip and a complete change of course.
She recently started her own media production company, Ocean Rebels, to help create awareness about how we can move forward together and not plunder the planet.
“Harker has sown so many seeds within me, but I choose which ones I want to water,” reflects Duong. “The strongest voice of Harker is, ‘here is the path to make you successful’ but after I left that path to pursue many different trials, failures and experiments, I realized that Harker also prepared me for plan B, C and D. Now, as I’m forging my own path through life, I know that I’m prepared for anything but that I get to choose where I go. It’s been an awesome ride, and I’m excited for what’s next.”
Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.(more…)
Agata Sorotokin ’15 has been named a 2019 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow for her drive, creativity, intellectual spirit and commitment to the values at the heart of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans support outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursuing a graduate education in the United States. The organization selects 30 individuals a year, and each receives up to $90,000 toward his or her graduate education. This year’s fellows, 20 of whom are women, were selected from a pool of 1,767 applicants from across the country. Sorotokin will use her fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in music at SUNY Stony Brook. Read her bio, here.
Past fellows include former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris; Stanford artificial intelligence leader Fei-Fei Li; Lieutenant Governor of Washington Cyrus Habib; composer Paola Prestini; computational biologist Pardis Sabeti; award-winning writer Kao Kalia Yang; and more than 600 other New American leaders. The list also includes several other Harker alumni: Suchita Nety ’13 and Angela Ma ’14 in 2018,Ashvin Swaminathan ’13 in 2017 and Daniel Kim ’09 in 2014.
Mishi Vachev ’15 is featured in a nice article from Eckerd College, as she was one of 25 students worldwide chosen as a 2018 American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) Conviron Scholar. Benefits include a one-year membership to the ASPB, a hands-on virtual learning program, virtual mentoring with a plant science professional, and the opportunity to present a poster at the next ASPB meeting and to submit an article to the ASPB blog for publication.
“She’s been doing excellent work here at Eckerd in our greenhouse,” said Jacob Browne, director of admission. Vachev credits Harker with helping her find her way.
The article notes, “A biotechnology class in high school combined her passions in a real way. When choosing a college, she already knew what she was looking for.” And she’s not done yet.
Vachev will receive a bachelor’s degree this spring and said, “I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in plant breeding and to specifically work on breeding crops for third world countries or populations in need of improved agriculture.”
Usua Amanam MS ’05, an energy resources engineering Ph.D. candidate at Stanford, was named a 2019 Siebel Scholar in October 2018. Amanam attended Harker from pre-kindergarten thorough grade 8. The Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes nearly 100 exceptional students from the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, energy science and bioengineering. Read more about Amanam’s incredible journey at Stanford Earth.