The latest installment of TEDxHarkerSchool was held March 22 at the upper school campus. Launched in fall 2011, the student-organized series of events gives high school students interested in entrepreneurship the chance to hear inspiring speakers and meet with mentors from many different fields.
Organizers put together another impressive lineup of speakers for this year’s event. Among them was Harker student Arjun Mehta, grade 12, who has received much attention for his most recent endeavor, a conferencing app known as Stoodle, which already boasts thousands of users since its launch in December 2012. With the assistance of his father, Karl, Mehta’s previous business idea grew into PlaySpan, which sold for $200 million.
Mehta detailed what he believed were key steps for young entrepreneurs. He advised students to look for “pain points” in their everyday lives, seeking solutions to problems they regularly encounter. In response to the differences he noticed between Harker and his previous school, Mehta founded Stoodle to help give students at other schools a chance to collaborate and share their knowledge with one another. Mehta also encouraged future entrepreneurs to work in familiar spaces. Because Mehta was a high school student, he and his Stoodle collaborators were treated as “experts in the room” when meeting with older, more experienced entrepreneurs.
Mehta also offered advice on how to reconcile the busy life of a young entrepreneur with the obligations of a high school student. He cited a “willingness to be misunderstood” due to not having as much time for friends and extracurricular activities.
During the Q&A session that followed his talk, Mehta demonstrated his 30-second elevator pitch to the audience. He added that he plans to continue working on Stoodle while in college and keep it free to all.
A morning break allowed students to converse with the speakers and mentors in attendance. Students also got the chance to sit down with various entrepreneurs during lunch, gaining knowledge and sharing ideas.
“I find the mentor luncheon to be the most unique aspect of TEDxHarkerSchool, as it gives attendees an opportunity to interact with professionals on a more personal level,” said Glenn Reddy, grade 11, who helped organize and run the event.
New this year, various companies showed their products in the Nichols Hall atrium. This year’s exhibitors were GoPro, Master Images, Stoodle, Fuhu and Lighting for Literacy. “The attendees jumped at the chance to check out the booths in the atrium, and they were one of the most popular parts of the day,” Reddy said.
Antoine Delcayre, a grade 10 student at Branham High School who also attended last year’s TEDxHarker event, found the speakers helpful and “really enjoyed the knowledge they shared.”
Fellow Branham student Saumya Bhatia, grade 10, said attending TEDxHarker the previous year helped inspire her and her friends to start a DECA chapter at their school. She particularly enjoyed the talk from Stanford University lecturer Rashmi Menon, who said that it was good for people to admit to needing help. “I think that’s really important because I feel like a lot of times I don’t admit to not knowing things and I sort of want to be the expert in everything,” Bhatia said. “But I feel like she really clarified that it’s OK to ask for help and that in the end it’s for your own benefit.”
One of the more popular afternoon speakers was Dr. Ronda Beaman, chief creative officer at PEAK Learning and clinical professor at Cal Poly’s Orfalea College of Business. Known for her infectious speaking style and stage presence, Beaman started her talk by leading the audience in the Hokey Pokey. Beaman told the audience about the importance of neoteny, which is the ability for people to keep their “childlike qualities” – such as curiosity, creativity and an inclination toward experimentation – through their adult lives. The “neotenous mind” is what allows for the creative entrepreneurship that leads to exciting ideas such as phones that converse with their owners, and microfinance organizations such as Kiva, she said.
“Most of us are right-answered, brown-desked, tested right out of our original selves,” she said, lamenting the loss of creativity that occurs as children grow up. Beaman suggested that to help themselves retain the adventurousness of childhood, students could carry around a picture of their much younger selves as a reminder of the qualities they had at that age. She also suggested carrying around a crayon to smell, which greatly amused the audience. “The scent brings you back to kindergarten, before you knew ‘no,’ before you were told to sit down, before you were told to be quiet,” she said. “It just takes you back to possibility and color, and I hope you colored outside the lines.”
UPDATE: Videos of the keynote speakers, breakout sessions and the panel discussion from this year’s Research Symposium are now available on YouTube.
Science enthusiasts from across the Harker community gathered at the upper school campus on March 29 for this year’s Harker Research Symposium. In the nearly 10 years since its founding, the research symposium has provided lovers of scientific research with an eventful day in which students, parents, faculty and staff meet to share their enthusiasm, see the results of student research and hear from notable members of the scientific community.
The Nichols Hall atrium was once again the epicenter of activity for the event, with exhibitors from companies such as Google, NVidia and the South Asian Heart Center providing information to passersby and holding tech demos. SeaLife Aquarium Maintenance, stationed in front of the atrium’s aquarium, gave attendees the opportunity to observe and touch starfish and other forms of aquatic life. Tesla Motors also had a presence, giving people a chance to test drive one of their award-winning electric cars. Over at the rotunda, Brian Tuan, grade 12, demonstrated a 3-D printer to a steady stream of onlookers as it constructed such objects as a toy car and a plastic model of Batman’s head.
Nichols Hall auditorium and classrooms hosted formal talks by Harker students known as breakout sessions, where students gave detailed presentations on their research projects. Some of these, such as senior Vikas Bhetanabhotla’s project on the identification of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxys and Zareen Choudhury’s investigation of the chemical makeup of stars, earned recognition in prestigious contests such as the Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search. At the gym, middle and upper school students had poster presentations set up showing the results of research they had performed. Students were on hand to answer questions about their research projects, impressing those in attendance with both the depth of the research and their presentation skills.
Morning keynote speaker Claire Max, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz, shared her work on adaptive optics with a capacity crowd in the auditorium. Using informative photos and videos, Max showed how turbulence in space can obscure telescopes’ view of the stars. Adaptive optics corrects this distortion using mirrors and laser technology. This technology, she explained, can be used to enhance images of planets and find out where black holes ended up as galaxies collided. It has also been used to enhance images of the human eye, which she demonstrated with close-up videos of blood cells traveling through capillaries.
Two alumni were featured as speakers at this year’s symposium. The first, Ilya Sukhar ’03, shared some of the lessons he learned (including some misconceptions he had during his years as a Harker student) in entrepreneurship as the founder and CEO of Parse, which was acquired by Facebook in 2013. Parse, which still operates independently, enables developers to more easily create mobile apps for multiple platforms. Nikhil Parthasarathy ’11, speaking during a special lunchtime event at Manzanita Hall, discussed his current exploits as an undergraduate at Stanford University, which included exciting work in artificial intelligence. He addressed Harker’s current students, telling them they may end up taking many paths, arriving somewhere they might not have anticipated.
Khan Academy founder Salman Khan was the star of the afternoon, packing both the auditorium and the gym, where all of the keynote addresses were simulcast. Khan talked about how what began as a hobby in 2004 – tutoring his cousin in math – turned into one of the world’s most popular online learning resources, used by more than six million unique visitors each month. During the extended question-and-answer session, Khan was kind enough to move from Nichols Hall to the gym for those who were unable to view his talk in person.
The day ended with a panel discussion featuring upper school science department chair Anita Chetty, science teacher Chris Spenner, Harker parent Manish Gupta (Aarzu, grade 6; Anika, grade 12), junior Jason Chu and seniors Bhetanabhotla, Stephanie Chen, Choudhury, Anika Gupta, Sreyas Misra and Vikram Sundar. The panel discussed the various options offered by Harker’s research program and included student testimonials on their experiences conducting research at Harker.
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.
This story was submitted by Harker middle school math teacher Vandana Kadam.
Harker students had great success at the Mathcounts chapter level contest in mid-February. Harker brought a team of four students, as well as six others who participated as individuals. This year, seven grade 8 and three grade 7 students represented Harker. The team comprised Jimmy Lin, Rajiv Movva and Shaya Zarkesh, all grade 8, and Katherine Tian, grade 7.
The individual participants were grade 8 students Jerry Chen, Michael Kwan, Jeffrey Ma and and Randy Zhao, as well as grade 7 students Rose Guan and Cindy Wang. Everyone performed exceptionally well. The Santa Clara Valley Chapter is known to be the toughest chapter for Mathcounts nationwide, with about 430 students from 52 schools participating. Harker’s team placed fourth in the chapter behind Miller Middle School, Cupertino Middle School and Redwood Middle School, who were all within three points of each another. Harker’s team will head to the state competition on March 22 at Stanford University.
In addition to the four team members, Chen will go to the state competition as an individual participant (not on the regular team) due to his excellent performance at the chapter competition. Also noteworthy is that Movva placed first in the countdown round, in which a group of students is given 45 seconds to answer a question. The student who buzzes first gets to answer and, if they answer correctly, they move to the next round. Prior to the final round, there were several rounds where the first student to answer two out of three problems correctly was declared the winner. In the Santa Clara Valley Chapter, students buzz within the first three seconds of the question being shown on the projector, creating pressure to buzz quickly and give the correct answer. The students worked very hard to reach this level of success, even attending weekend training sessions and after-school sessions since September.
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.
Mehta, whose previous business sold for $200 million, got the idea for Stoodle during his first year at Harker. Shortly after transferring to Harker during his sophomore year, “I noticed a significant difference from the public school I attended my freshman year and realized that there was a great opportunity to connect students from different schools to share knowledge,” he said.
Developed by Mehta, Simar Mangat ’13 and senior Divyahans Gupta, Stoodle enables students to collaborate on things such as school projects and homework assignments. Maverick McNealy ’13 was also involved in the project, but left due to his growing golf career.
When legendary entrepreneur Vinod Khosla visited Harker as the keynote speaker for the 2012 Research Symposium, Mehta spoke to him about Stoodle. Khosla referred Mehta to his wife, Neeru, who was impressed with Stoodle and its team. Neeru’s CK-12 Foundation, which provides open source educational materials to students and teachers, soon began funding Stoodle, which is already generating buzz. Just this week, Stoodle was one of about 40 companies featured at the “Education Datapalooza” held at the White House, a joint event run by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and the Departments of Education and Treasury, which showcased apps and services available to help students succeed.
“The response has been fantastic,” Mehta said. “Teachers and students across the nation are praising Stoodle.org for its helpfulness, flexibility and ease-of-use, as well as, of course, for being free.” The tool reportedly already has thousands of users since launching last month, and Gordon Jones, managing director of the Harvard Innovation Lab, recently joined the company’s board, alongside Neeru Khosla, Richard Schmalensee, dean emeritus of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Stanford Graduate School chief technology officer Paul Kim.
“The positive buzz we have been getting from educators across the country has been overwhelming,” said Mehta. “People are loving it! Notable individuals like U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Jim Shelton have also recognized and tweeted about us! As you can probably tell from my excessive exclamation mark use, this is a very exciting time for my team and me!” he finished.
In addition to Stoodle, Mehta also has worked with head of school Chris Nikoloff, advancement head Joe Rosenthal and business and entrepreneurship teacher Juston Glass to form a startup incubator for Harker students. Mehta said his experience with the business and entrepreneurship program has been “very beneficial, mostly through the quality of individuals the school invites to campus.”
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!”
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.