Today the Society for Science & the Public announced that final events for this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search will take place virtually later this month after being postponed from their original date in March. Senior Cynthia Chen’s project, titled “Decoding Neural Networks: Discovery of Anti-Tumor B Cell Receptor Motifs Using a Novel Sequence-Based Computational Framework,” will be one of the 40 finalist projects featured in the virtual Public Exhibition of Projects, held Sat., July 25. This year’s winners will be announced during the Winners Award Ceremony, which takes place July 29.
Jan. 22, 2020:
The Society for Science & the Public this morning named senior Cynthia Chen one of the top 40 finalists in the 2020 Regeneration Science Talent Search! As a finalist, Chen is now eligible to attend the final portion of the competition, held in Washington, D.C. from March 5-11. Each finalist receives a minimum of $25,000 with chance to win one of 10 cash prizes, ranging from $40,000 to $250,000. During their stay, finalist projects will undergo a thorough judging process, and finalists will also have the opportunity to meet notable scientists and members of Congress.
Jan. 8, 2020:
Today, seniors Cynthia Chen and Joshua Zhou were named two of the nation’s top 300 scholars in the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search. These 300 high school students were chosen from nearly 2,000 entries. Each scholar and his or her school will receive a prize of $2,000. The top 40 finalists will be announced on Jan. 22 and invited to participate in the last stage of the competition, scheduled for March 5-11 in Washington, D.C. Congratulations and good luck!
Over the weekend, the upper school’s Science Bowl team competed in the national championship of the US DOE Science Bowl, in which 64 teams from across the country participated. Harker reached the top 16 in the event — held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic — narrowly missing the top 8 after a toss-up question and a bonus answer. William Zhao also participated in a national math contest and as such was unable to compete in the final two rounds of the Science Bowl.
Feb. 12, 2020:
On Saturday, a team of Harker students won the U.S. Department of Energy’s Regional Science Bowl, held at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It was Harker’s third victory in four years. The team – made up of sophomores David Dai, Harsh Deep, Rishab Parthasarathy and William Zhao and senior Emily Liu – went undefeated the entire day, at one point rallying back from an 18 to 72 deficit in a match against Saratoga High to win 118 to 76. Upper school chemistry teacher Robbie Korin called it the “most impressive comeback I have seen since I started doing this in 1991.” The team will go on to represent the Bay Area in April at the national championship in Washington, D.C.
Another team of Harker students – freshmen Rohan Bhowmik and Nicholas Wei, juniors Michael Eng and Russell Yang and senior Kyle Li – also performed well, reaching the elimination round before tying for seventh place over all out of 28 teams.
Harker students had a great showing at the 2020 Synopsys Science & Technology Championship, winning multiple first awards and grand prizes. Eighth graders Gautam Bhooma and Ramit Goyal were each grand prize winners, and also won first awards along with fellow eighth graders Zachary Blue, Alex Guo, Jordan Labio, Nathan Liu, Ella Lan and Heidi Lu. All won first awards and qualified for the California Science & Engineering Fair, which has been canceled along with the International Science and Engineering Fair, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixth graders Brenna Ren, Kallie Wang, Hubert Lau and Serena Lau were also first award winners.
At the high school level, juniors Krishay Mukhija, Sidra Xu, Russell Yang, Nicholas Yi and sophomore Harsh Deep all won grand prizes. Deep, Muhkija, Xu and Yang also took home first awards. Other upper school first award winners were juniors Michael Eng and Aditya Tadimeti and sophomores Akhilesh Chegu and Deven Shah.
Harker students had another great year in the Technology Student Association’s annual TEAMS (Tests of Engineering, Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition, with four teams taking top spots in California. The team of freshmen Rohan Bhowmik, Brian Chen, Riya Gupta, Nicholas Wei, Stephen Xia, Sabrina Zhu, Sally Zhu and sophomore Alex Hu took first place in the 9/10 division, where the team of sophomores Akhilesh Chegu, Harsh Deep, Shounak Ghosh, Mark Hu, Caden Lin, Sasvath Ramachandran, Kailash Ranganathan and Deven Shah took third overall. Also in the 9/10 division, Zach Clark, Angela Jia, Chirag Kaushik, Alex Liou, Rohan Thakur, Michael Tran, Aimee Wang and Gloria Zhu, all grade 10, placed fifth. Placing fifth in the 11/12 division were juniors Shray Alag, Annesh Ghosh Dastidar, Sophia Horng, Helen Li, Luisa Pan, Aditya Tadimeti, Bowen Yin and Alex Zhai.
The annual TEAMS competition tasks students with answering multiple-choice and essay questions on a chosen topic for the year. Top qualifying teams from each state are invited to the National TSA Conference, where teams solve written problems and present their solutions. This year’s national conference, originally scheduled to take place in Nashville from June 27-July 1, was canceled due to safety concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Harker eighth graders Anish Jain, Jordan Labio, Kyle Leung and Vardaan Ghai received an honorable mention in the Toshiba/National Science Teaching Association ExploraVision contest, one of the world’s largest student science competitions. Honorable mentions are given to the top 10 percent of submissions, of which there are about 5,000 every year. The students developed their project, titled “Nanosense: Eliminating Food Allergies Using IgE/Th1/Th2 Sensors and Nanotechnology,” with the help of middle school science teacher Kathy Peng. This year’s competition tasked students with examining the technology of today to envision how it might evolve over the next 20 years.
A team of computer scientists including Anand Natarajan ’09 recently published a proof that has solved “a raft of open problems in computer science, physics and mathematics,” wrote Quanta Magazine’s Kevin Hartnett. Natarajan co-authored the proof with researchers at Caltech, the University of Toronto, the University of Technology Sydney and the University of Texas, Austin. The full article contains an in-depth explanation of how the proof was developed.
Last month, seniors Finn Frankis and Sahil Gosain, juniors Arya Maheshwari and Saloni Shah, sophomore Sasvath Ramachandran and freshman Tiffany Chang competed at the 2020 US Invitational Young Physicists Tournament, held at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. Each team took part in a “physics fight,” in which students present their solutions and are questioned by a member of another team. Teams are judged on the quality of their presentations as well as their ability to ask and answer questions. Although Harker was not one of this year’s top placing schools, the team was awarded the Clifford Swartz Trophy for having the best poster presentation. Harker won the tournament in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Middle school students became regional champions at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Middle School Science Bowl, held Feb. 22 at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Coached by middle school math chair Vandana Kadam, the team of eighth graders Gautam Bhooma, Justin Chen, Ethan Liu and Arnav Swaroop and seventh grader Jonathan Xue went undefeated in the opening round robin portion of the event. In the elimination round, Harker fell to Miller Middle School’s Team 1 before meeting them again in the finals, where Harker won with a score of 92-64. The team will now move on to the finals of the national competition, which takes place April 30-May 4 in Washington, D.C. With the upper school Science Bowl team’s win earlier this month, this marks only the second time in Harker history that both the middle and upper school Science Bowl teams have been regional champions at the same time.
In addition to Kadam’s guidance, the team was coached by upper school students Kyle Li and Emily Liu, both grade 12, junior Russell Yang, sophomores David Dai, Harsh Deep and Rishab Parthasarathy, and freshman Rohan Bhowmik, who organized weekly training sessions with practice questions and coaching on how to remain calm and build teamwork.
During the summers following her sophomore and junior years, senior Anika Tiwari worked as an intern at the University of California, San Francisco. The project, which investigates especially hard-to-kill viruses known as phages, was published last week in Nature, one of the world’s top science journals. It was also the subject of an article in The Atlantic by noted science writer Ed Yong, published last Wednesday. Congratulations to Anika on this wonderful recognition!
Harker preschoolers enjoyed a delightful pre-Halloween activity, reading the book “Pumpkin Jack” and carving their own pumpkins!
“In this story, a boy named Tim carves a pumpkin that he loves very much and names Jack,” explained Amanda Crook, preschool STEM specialist. “Jack starts getting old and Tim takes Jack to their garden where you watch page by page the transformations Jack makes during the decomposing process.
“In the middle of the book, nothing remains but a stem, old skin and some seeds. Tim says goodbye as he covers the seeds with dirt. Springtime arrives and Tim finds a sprout where Jack was. Tim nurtures the sprout as we follow the life cycle and growth of the pumpkin plant. By the end of the story Tim has many pumpkins that he shares with friends but keeps one for himself. Tim carves another face on his pumpkin and welcomes Jack back,” Crook said.
As the year progresses, each cottage will watch their pumpkin decompose and, hopefully, sprout again. The children will learn new vocabulary as they document the process through photos and observational drawings. “The students are excited to see this process through, and it will give them the opportunity to see that science does not always have instant results and often takes time and patience,” said Crook. For now, each cottage’s pumpkin has been placed outside the front of the STEM lab in the butterfly garden, and the cycle continues!