This article was originally published in the Harker Quarterly Spring 2011 Edition
Harker managed to reach two milestones in January when Intel announced that seven Harker seniors — Roshni Bhatnagar, Josephine Chen, Benjamin Chen, Rohan Mahajan, Nikhil Parthasarathy, Susan Tu and Jason Young — were named Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists, a California record. Two weeks later Harker became the only school in the nation to have two finalists, Mahajan and Parthasarathy. At press time both were preparing to travel to Washington, D.C., to compete against 38 other high school students in the final round.
October brought the announcement that Jacqueline Wang, grade 10, had been named a regional finalist in the 2010 Siemens competition. Regional semifinalists from Harker were Bhatnagar, Mahajan, Parthasarathy and Supraja Swamy, grade 12.
Students teamed up with mentors to complete the projects they had submitted for the contests. The mentors used their experience and expertise to provide guidance to the students as they conducted their research, while also fostering their intellectual curiosity. “I worked very closely with my mentors to complete the project,” said Parthasarathy, who worked with University of California, Santa Cruz mentors Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy, and Kamson Lai, a postdoctoral scholar in the astronomy and astrophysics department. His project dealt with the structure of distant galaxies. “When I first arrived at Santa Cruz, they gave me a lot of help to understand the necessary background information and also introduced me to many of the tools astronomers use to analyze galaxies.”
“Although only a high school student, I was given the freedom and the resources to pursue any topic that interested me and to contribute my thoughts and ideas during lab meetings and discussions,” said Chen, who studied the effects the compound celastrol has on reducing asthmatic symptoms. “Supported by the guidance of the entire lab, I dared to venture further, performing experiments no one else in the lab was familiar with.”
Working on the projects with mentors in labs also provides insight to the students on the kinds of research and experiments they will be doing at the college level. “The work that Nikhil did is comparable to what we would give a beginning graduate student,” said Faber. “He picked things up remarkably fast, and it was a pleasure working with him.”
Students also get to experience the thrill of making discoveries that could have a significant real-world impact. “Realizing the impact our findings could have on emotion regulation research was a seminal moment for me,” said Bhatnagar, whose project on how the insula, a small part of the brain, changes its size according to how people manage negative emotions earned her a semifinalist ranking in both the Intel and Siemens competitions. “This study was really exploratory. There were very few similar studies to compare with.”
These recent successes bolster Harker’s already impressive track record in these and other science competitions. Mahajan and Parthasarathy became the third and fourth Intel finalists from Harker since the school began participating five years ago, and Wang is the second consecutive regional finalist from Harker in the Siemens competition.
“One of the things that we emphasize at Harker is pushing yourself to reach your potential. It’s just another bar [students] set for themselves,” said Anita Chetty, science department chair. “I just want to offer as many opportunities as I can, and it’s up to the students themselves to decide if they what to participate.”
“The education I got at Harker was invaluable in preparing me for my research,” Parthasarathy said. “Because of the interdisciplinary nature of astrophysics, this project really combined the knowledge I got at Harker in areas such as math, physics and computer science.”
Chetty pointed out that several other departments in addition to science also contribute greatly to Harker’s success in science competitions. At the first January assembly to announce Harker’s Intel semifinalists, teachers from the science department who read the students’ projects and offered guidance in the submission process, noted how much the writing of the projects had improved.
“[The paper is] the only way of communicating what they’ve done and what they think about it,” Chetty said. “It has to be detailed enough, yet it has to be clear and you can’t ramble on.” She credited Harker’s English and history departments as well as its librarians for training the students to write high-caliber papers.
“It gets back to the standard that we set in each of our departments,” she said. “I really believe it’s important to recognize we are actually teaching the same skills, even though we may be using different disciplines.”
This article originally appeared in the spring 2011 Harker Quarterly.
Harker managed to reach two milestones in January when Intel announced that seven Harker seniors — Roshni Bhatnagar, Josephine Chen, Benjamin Chen, Rohan Mahajan, Nikhil Parthasarathy, Susan Tu and Jason Young — were named Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists, a California record. Two weeks later Harker became the only school in the nation to have two finalists, Mahajan and Parthasarathy. At press time both were preparing to travel to Washington, D.C., to compete against 38 other high school students in the final round.
October brought the announcement that Jacqueline Wang, grade 10, had been named a regional finalist in the 2010 Siemens competition. Regional semifinalists from Harker were Bhatnagar, Mahajan, Parthasarathy and Supraja Swamy, grade 12.
Students teamed up with mentors to complete the projects they had submitted for the contests. The mentors used their experience and expertise to provide guidance to the students as they conducted their research, while also fostering their intellectual curiosity. “I worked very closely with my mentors to complete the project,” said Parthasarathy, who worked with University of California, Santa Cruz mentors Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy, and Kamson Lai, a postdoctoral scholar in the astronomy and astrophysics department. His project dealt with the structure of distant galaxies. “When I first arrived at Santa Cruz, they gave me a lot of help to understand the necessary background information and also introduced me to many of the tools astronomers use to analyze galaxies.”
“Although only a high school student, I was given the freedom and the resources to pursue any topic that interested me and to contribute my thoughts and ideas during lab meetings and discussions,” said Josephine Chen, who studied the effects the compound celastrol has on reducing asthmatic symptoms. “Supported by the guidance of the entire lab, I dared to venture further, performing experi- ments no one else in the lab was familiar with.”
Working on the projects with mentors in labs also provides insight to the students on the kinds of research and experiments they will be doing at the college level. “The work that Nikhil did is comparable to what we would give a beginning graduate student,” said Faber. “He picked things up remarkably fast, and it was a pleasure working with him.”
Students also get to experience the thrill of making discoveries that could have a significant real-world impact. “Realizing the impact our findings could have on emotion regulation research was a seminal moment for me,” said Bhatnagar, whose project on how the insula, a small part of the brain, changes its size according to how people manage negative emotions earned her a semifinalist ranking in both the Intel and Siemens competitions. “This study was really exploratory. There were very few similar studies to compare with.”
These recent successes bolster Harker’s already impressive track record in these and other science competitions. Mahajan and Parthasarathy became the third and fourth Intel finalists from Harker since the school began participating five years ago, and Wang is the second consecutive regional finalist from Harker in the Siemens competition.
“One of the things that we emphasize at Harker is pushing yourself to reach your potential. It’s just another bar [students] set for themselves,” said Anita Chetty, science department chair. “I just want to offer as many opportunities as I can, and it’s up to the students themselves to decide if they what to participate.”
“The education I got at Harker was invaluable in preparing me for my research,” Parthasarathy said. “Because of the interdisciplinary nature of astrophysics, this project really combined the knowledge I got at Harker in areas such as math, physics and computer science.”
Chetty pointed out that several other departments in addition to science also contribute greatly to Harker’s success in science competitions. At the first January assembly to announce Harker’s Intel semifinalists, teachers from the science department who read the students’ projects and offered guidance in the submission process, noted how much the writing of the projects had improved.
“[The paper is] the only way of communicating what they’ve done and what they think about it,” Chetty said. “It has to be detailed enough, yet it has to be clear and you can’t ramble on.” She credited Harker’s English and history departments as well as its librarians for training the students to write high-caliber papers.
“It gets back to the standard that we set in each of our departments,” she said. “I really believe it’s important to recognize we are actually teaching the same skills, even though we may be using different disciplines.”
The Triple Helix Online, the online journal of The Triple Helix, Inc., recently published several stories written by Harker students. The Triple Helix, Inc. (TTH), is an international nonprofit organization made up of students from universities worldwide that specializes in journalism in the fields of science, society, business, ethics and law.
Harker is the first and so far only high school chapter of TTH, which has 27 chapters in universities all over the world and receives funding from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The partnership was kick-started by Jennifer Ong ’06, who is TTH’s chief operating officer. Students Naomi So, grade 12, and Pavitra Rengarajan, grade 11, act as the editors-in-chief for the Harker chapter, and collaborate with TTH senior editors to prepare Harker student submissions for publication.
Basu and Tandon had their writings made into posters, which were displayed at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., which took place Feb. 17-21. The two students were in attendance at the meeting as the guests of Triple Helix. They attended a number of workshops and met members of TTH from other universities, as well as attending talks with top researchers.
Anita Chetty, science department chair, who accompanied Basu and Tandon to Washington, said The Triple Helix offers a way for students to parlay their interests in subjects such as science and technology into an avenue for publication. “They like to look at the issues,” she said. “They’re not necessarily interested in research. They want to do more of a commentary.”
The Harker chapter’s print edition of the Triple Helix magazine will be distributed at the Harker Research Symposium on April 23.
Grade 8 students Matthew Huang, Neil Movva and Andrew Zhang; grade 7 student Jonathan Ma; and Aneesh Samineni, grade 6, placed second in the regional Science Bowl competition, held March 12 at the NASA Ames Research Center. The Science Bowl is a national competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and features teams of middle school students answering very difficult questions about a variety of sciences in a quiz bowl environment. The team was well coached by Joseph Chu, an alumnus of Lynbrook High School, who trained the students on Fridays after school.
After qualifying in the initial round robin faceoffs, the Harker team headed on to the elimination rounds, where they lost a very close and intense game in the 11th round against San Ramon’s Gale Ranch, who defeated Harker in the round robins and also took second place nationally in last year’s Science Bowl. “Even the moderator, judges and scorekeepers were spellbound at the end of round 11,” said Vandana Kadam, faculty coordinator at the Science Bowl event and middle school Mathematics Department chair.
During a flurry of math contests in February and March, Harker students have been performing admirably. On Feb. 12, Harker participated in the Santa Clara chapter of the MathCounts competition, said to be the most competitive chapter in the country, a notion supported by the 13-way tie for first place. Cindy Liu and Matthew Huang, both grade 8, both scored 45 out of a possible 46 points and finished 15th and 16th, respectively. David Lin, grade 8, received a score of 44 and placed 20th in a four-way tie. Andrew Zhang, grade 8 and Allison Wang, grade 7, had 43 points and placed 24th and 27th, respectively.
In the team competition, Harker’s team, made up of Huang, Liu, Zhang and Celine Liang, grade 7, took third place in the competition, earning a spot in the state competition on March 19 at Stanford University. Lin will participate in the individual competition because of his performance at the Santa Clara chapter.
On Feb. 14, middle school students took either the American Mathematics Competition’s AMC 10 A or AMC 12 A tests, and took the AMC 10 A or AMC 12 B tests on Feb. 24. In this contest, meant for high school sophomores and seniors, abovementioned students Huang, Liang, Lin, Liu and Wang, as well as Suzy Lou and Sriram Somasundaram, both grade 8; David Zhu, grade 6; and Jessica Zhu, grade 7, performed well enough to compete in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME).
Several students scored high in the California Math League (CAML) contest, which was administered Feb. 22. Out of a possible 35 points, David Zhu earned a perfect score, while classmates Peter Wu and Kai-Siang Ang scored 34 and 33, respectively. Grade 6 students James He, Neymika Jain and Steven Cao all scored 29.
Seventh graders Wang and Michael Zhao had perfect scores, and classmates Jessica Zhu, Anthony Luo and Jonathan Dai had 34. Jonathan Ma, Celine Liang and Vineet Kosaraju earned 33 points and Rishabh Chandra finished with 32 points.
In grade 8, Cindy Liu and Andrew Jin had 35 points. Andrew Zhang and Aadyot Bhatnagar both earned 34. Scoring 33 points were David Lin, Steven Wang, Suzy Lou and Pranav Reddy. Nikhil Kishore, Helen Wu and Samyukta Yagati all had 32 points.
Harker hosted the 10th annual Diana Nichols Harker Math Invitational in which Harker students also excelled. This was the first contest to also feature international competitors from the World Foreign Language Middle School in China and Viveka School of Excellence in India. Results are contained in the full report of the event.
The winners of the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search were announced Tuesday, and although Harker’s two finalists, Rohan Mahajan and Nikhil Parthasarathy, both grade 12, were not among top 10 winners, we are tremendously proud of their accomplishment in making it to the finals in Washington, D.C.
Harker was the only school in the U.S. to have more than one finalist, and this year’s contest marked the first time California surpassed New York for the largest number of finalists, with a total of 11 students among the 40 who traveled to Washington for the final round of the competition.
Harker extends its warmest congratulations to all 11 members of the California contingent, especially Evan O’Dorney, 17, of Danville, named the first-place winner of the $100,000 prize for his project, a mathematical comparison of two methods of estimating the square root of an integer. We further extend accolades to the remaining 29 finalists for their impressive application to their projects.
O’Dorney was one of three California students to make the top 10, out of the 1,744 entries from high school seniors nationwide. Selena Li, 17, from Fair Oaks, took fifth place and was awarded $30,000, and San Diego’s Xiaoyu “Carrie” Cao, 17 took eighth and won $20,000. Go science!
Mar. 15, 2011
[Update] KQED radio featured a short interview on their California Report this moring with Nikhil Parthasarathy, grade 12, as he and classmate Rohan Mahajan await the judges’ final decision in the Intel Science Talent Search contest in Washington D.C.. Harker is the only school this year with two finalists in the contest.
The extensive article, lauding the strengths of Harker’s science program, is by veteran reporter Lisa M. Krieger, who made several visits to the campus in February and March to spend time with students and teachers. Longtime Mercury News photographer Patrick Tehan captured the photos for the piece. One impetus for the story was the January announcement from Intel that The Harker School was the only school in the country earning two finalist spots at their annual Intel Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C. Winners are announced March 15, 2011.
The story is inspiring comments from educators, alumni, current students, parents and others passionate about education.
The San Jose Mercury ran a great story about Harker and its science program, saying,
“With 20 Intel semifinalists and four finalists in six years, and many other prestigious science titles already to its credit, Harker is fast becoming the “it” school for aspiring researchers, a springboard to a life of inquiry”
Harker’s Young Physicists team brought home the championship trophy in early February, a school first, and is prominently featured on the tournament’s home page.
The team, seniors Karthik Dhore and Nikhil Parthasarathy, and juniors Vishesh Gupta and Akhil Prakash, accompanied by Drs. Miriam Allersma and Mark Brada, flew to Oak Ridge, Tenn., site of the 2011 U.S. Invitational Young Physicists Tournament sponsored by the United States Association for Young Physicists Tournaments (USAYPT).
At the competition, students from across the country present research on four open-ended physics problems, announced a full year prior, requiring work well above most common high school curricula, said Brada.
“Since the problems are particularly difficult, each student who travelled to the competition worked in a team with one or two other Harker students to complete all of the work that was required,” Brada added.
Dhore worked with Juniors Shival Dasu and Sankalp Raju on the Salt Water Oscillator problem, Parthasarathy worked with Junior Govinda Dasu on the Magic Motor problem, Gupta worked with freshman Sarika Bajaj and junior Max Isenberg on the Domino Wave problem and Prakash worked with Sophomore Payal Modi on the Boiling Water problem.
“Each member of the team contributed a great deal of work to the solutions that were ultimately presented at the competition,” said Brada.
The competition itself is carried out through a series of “Physics Fights,” which are essentially debate-style presentations in which one team presents research findings while another team looks for flaws in how their research was conducted. The team from Harker ultimately prevailed at the taking home the travelling tournament trophy for the first time in school history.
Feb. 16, 2011
[Update] Nikhil Parthasarathy and Rohan Mahajan were awarded commendations during the San Jose City Council meeting in mid-February. “The Harker School has a long history of producing high-achieving students,” said Councilman Pete Constant. “Each year since I’ve been representing San José’s Council District 1, it seems I have the chance to recognize such students for their achievements. It’s great to have Rohan and Nikhil carrying on this tradition of excellence and I congratulate The Harker School for being the only school in the nation with two finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search.”
Feb. 9, 2011
San Jose Councilmember Pete Constant has invited Harker Intel Science Talent Search finalists Rohan Mahajan and Nikhil Parthasarathy, both seniors, to attend the San José City Council meeting on Tues., Feb. 15 at 7 p.m. Constant will formally recognize and congratulate the budding scientists for their noteworthy achievement. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed will invite the young men to the lectern where he and Constant will present the commendation, and give the recipients a chance to say a few words. Read the full story of their Intel wins and of the record seven semifinalists from Harker this year.
Those planning to attend should arrive 10 minutes early. City Hall is located at 200 E. Santa Clara Street, in downtown San José. The meeting is held in the Council Chambers in the Wing section of City Hall.