Society for Science & the Public (SSP) announced today that 15 Harker seniors were named semifinalists in the 2015 Intel Science Talent Search, more than any other school in the country. In 2012, Harker had a record 12 semifinalists, so this year represents a new high watermark! 

“Inquiry, curiosity and persistence embody the culture of The Harker School,” said Anita Chetty, science department chair. “The development of scientific thinking and effective communication of discoveries is part of instruction in all of the subjects we teach. This is a significant achievement for our school, yet it is a natural outcome of the daily work of our dedicated preschool-through-grade 12 faculty and our outstanding students. When I think of the diversity of research questions that our students posed and the significance of their findings, I am left with so much hope that our next generation will find solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.”

More than 1,800 students from 460 high schools entered this year’s Intel Science Talent Search; from those entrants, 300 semifinalists were selected. Each semifinalist will receive a $1,000 cash prize and is eligible to become a finalist in this year’s contest. An additional $1,000 is awarded to each semifinalist’s school. Finalists receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the final stage of the competition, where more than $1 million in prizes will be awarded. SSP will announce the 40 national finalists in this year’s competition on Jan. 21.

This year’s semifinalists and their project titles are:

Shikhar Dixit (“Immunomodulation by Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cell Line ARPE-19”)

Andrew Jin (“A Machine Learning Framework to Identify Selected Variants in Regions of Recent Adaptation”)

Rohith Kuditipudi (“Bayesian Time Series Analysis of Liver Disease Progression”)

David Lin (“Characterizing Gravitationally Bound Halo Structures in Cosmological Dark Matter Simulations”)

Cindy Liu (“Characterizing Novel Binders as Tools for Understanding Chloride Transport Mechanisms”)

Neil Movva (“How do Teeth Grow? Characterizing the Morphogenesis of the Periodontal Ligament through Complementary Biomechanical and Histological Analysis”)

Pranav Reddy (“Differential Motif Discovery to Isolate Associated Sequences and Relevant Transcription Factors for Alzheimer’s in a Mouse Model”)

Anokhi Saklecha (“The Utilization of RGD-coated Gold Nanoprisms and Optical Coherence Tomography to Target alphavbeta3 integrin: A Novel Method to Detect Circulating Tumor Cells”)

Nikash Shankar (“A Potential Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease: Encapsulation of Curcumin within Polymeric PLGA-PEG Nanoparticles Protects Neuro2A Cells from Beta-Amyloid Induced Cytotoxicity and Improves Bioavailability”)

Sriram Somasundaram (“A Novel Design and Evaluation of Chitosan Nanoparticle Ocular Drug Delivery System Using Protein-Ligand Docking Simulations and pH Dependent Corneal Permeation”)

Kailas Vodrahalli (“Transporting Solar Energy Through Optical Waveguides for Concentrated Solar Power Applications”)

Steven Wang (“Computer-Aided Genomic Characterization of Colorectal Cancer Driver Genes for Oncogenic Transformation of Primary Colon Organoids”)

Menghua Wu (“Characteristics of Drug Combination Therapy in Oncology by Analyzing Clinical Trial Data on ClinicalTrials.gov”)

Leo Yu (“A Novel Algorithm to Unify CMIP5 Ensemble Climate Models for Optimal Climate Projections”)  

Andrew Zhang (“The Dearth of Lithium-Rich Stars in Globular Clusters”)

The Science Talent Search, launched by SSP in 1942 in a partnership with Westinghouse, has since become one of the country’s most respected science contests for high school seniors. It has been sponsored by Intel since 1998. Congratulations to students, mentors and teachers, and good luck in the next round!

Today Society for Science & the Public announced that Harker seniors Andrew Jin, Rohith Kuditipudi and Steven Wang were named finalists in the 2015 Intel Science Talent Search (STS), making Harker the only school in the country with three finalists. This also breaks Harker’s previous record of two finalists, set in 2011. Harker has now produced a total of nine finalists since it began participating in the Intel STS during the 2005-06 school year, when Yi Sun ’06 took second place nationally.

Jin, Kuditipudi and Wang were among 15 semifinalists from Harker – the most of any school in the nation – who were named earlier this month. They now join 40 other high school students from across the United States who will travel to Washington, D.C., in March for the final stage of the competition, where more than $1 million in cash prizes will be awarded.

While in Washington, the finalists will have the opportunity to demonstrate their research to key figures in the scientific community and national leadership. Winners will be announced at a special invitation-only gala at the National Building Museum on March 10.

The San Jose Mercury News mentioned Harker’s three finalists today in its coverage of the announcement, noting that nine of the 11 California finalists are from the Bay Area. The American Bazaar  and China Daily also covered the story.

Update April 1, 2015

Great interview with Andrew on his research when starting his project: http://www.broadinstitute.org/blog/broad-summer-scholar-wins-prestigious-intel-science-prize

Update – Mar. 27, 2015
Today, Andrew was the subject of a news story in ChinaDaily, and earlier this week was featured in a TV news segment on the Chinese language network Sinovision.

Update – Mar. 11, 2015
The Wall Street Journal online posted a great interview with Andrew today! 

Mar. 10, 2015
Harker senior Andrew Jin won a first-place medal of distinction in the Global Good category in this year’s Intel Science Talent Search. He is the first Harker student since 2006 to be named a winner in the competition and is one of three first-place winners in this year’s Intel STS, each of them claiming a prize of $150,000.

Jin, along with seniors Steven Wang and Rohith Kuditipudi, were named finalists in this year’s Intel STS in January, making Harker the only school nationwide with more than two finalists. Harker had 15 Intel semifinalists, the most of any school in the country.

This past weekend, a team of five Harker students participated in the South/West Bay Area Regional Middle School Science Bowl, taking second place behind Miller Middle School in a final round that was decided by a mere six points. Team Harker – comprising grade 8 students Leon Lu, Akshay Ravoor, Kaushik Shivakumar, Katherine Tian and team captain Alexander Young – suffered only one loss in the early rounds, against Kennedy Middle School, and then defeated four other schools to reach the finals. Because Miller had not yet lost, they had to be defeated twice in the final round. “Harker beat Miller decisively in the final, scoring 108 to 50 points,” said middle school science teacher Vandana Kadam. “However, Miller still had one life and Harker had to go against them again and in this round Miller got an early lead of 54 points over Harker in the first half.” In the second half, Harker claimed a 66-18 lead, but a new rule that introduced a limit of 23 questions per round prevented Harker from moving any further.

“Although Harker came in second, the performance by the team members was a winning one!” Kadam exclaimed. “They did a commendable job in every round. It is not easy to sit through 11 rounds answering the hardest science questions you can find, ranging from Earth science to astronomy to life science to physical science to mathematics.”

Last week, Harker sophomores Sneha Bhetanabhotla, Trisha Dwivedi, Neymika Jain and Kshithija Mulam traveled to San Diego to present their research project at the annual meeting of the Society of Toxicology. Their project, on alternative breast cancer treatments, was one of eight high school projects chosen from around the country. On March 24, the students presented it for the first time to toxicology professors and experts.

That same day, the students met with researchers from Paris and toured the San Diego Convention Center. The following day, they were chosen to present at the poster session where toxicology experts were showing their research.

“Our research considered alternative treatments to breast cancer by using sodium bicarbonate to counteract acidity and enhance alkalization in the body in order to inhibit the invasion and metastasis of the cancer tumor,” said Mulam. “This experiment was conducted in vitro on mammary carcinoma cell line 4T1 using known anti-cancer supplement epigallocatechin gallate (green tea extract) as a comparison point to sodium bicarbonate.”

“Our project was accepted to the poster presenting session in which other professionals and researchers were presenting their works,” said Dwivedi. “On both days, we had a lot of professors and experts on the cancer cells and experiments we tested, so we received both commendations as well as feedback on how we can improve our project and take it to the next level. We are pleased to see that many experts who had been researching what we did were interested by what we had done, and our team is hopeful to expand upon our project to hopefully be able to present at next year’s conference in New Orleans.”

The professors in attendance were happy to offer advice to the students, who jumped at the opportunity to receive feedback from notable people in the field. “The chance to network with professionals and to present our findings to a larger audience at the conference was definitely an unforgettable experience for all of us,” said Mulam, “We hope to encounter more opportunities that help us further explore and appreciate the merits of research in the future.”

Harker students had another successful year at the 2015 Synopsys Silicon Valley & Technology Championship, held in March at the San Jose Convention Center.

Three upper school contestants won grand prizes, earning them trips to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Juniors Jonathan Ma and Sadhika Malladi each won a grand prize in the Biological Sciences category, while Nitya Mani, grade 12, was a grand prize winner in Physical Sciences. Vedaad Shakib, grade 10, was named a grand prize alternate in Physical Sciences. Malladi and Mani also received $250 each from the Whitney Foundation, and Mani received a certificate of achievement from Mu Alpha Theta.

Upper school students were most successful in the RRI Biological Sciences category. In addition to the awards won by Ma and Malladi, Rahul Jayaraman, grade 12, won a first award. Vineet Kosaraju, grade 11, Madhuri Nori, grade 12, and Amrita Singh, grade 10, won second awards, while sophomore Venkat Sankar earned an honorable mention. Nori also received a second place award and $175 cash prize from the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science.

In RRI Physical Sciences, senior Vamsi Gadiraju earned a first award, a $100 first prize from Morgan Lewis and an honorable mention from the Society of Vacuum Coaters. Fellow senior Leo Yu also received several honors, including an honorable mention student award from the Association for Computing Machinery, a certificate from Arizona State University’s Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, a certificate of achievement from Mu Alpha Theta and a certificate of achievement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Amy Dunphy, grade 9, received an honorable mention and a high school finalist certificate from the Synopsys Outreach Foundation. Another honorable mention went to Evani Radiya-Dixit, grade 10.

Sophomore Rishab Gargeya won a second award in Bioinformatics. He was one of six award winners in the category, with grade 9 students Jerry Chen, Anastasiya Grebin, Amy Jin and Anooshree Sengupta all earning honorable mentions and Justin Xie, also grade 9, receiving a certificate of achievement from Mu Alpha Theta.

Trisha Dwivedi and Kshithija Mulam, both grade 10, each won honorable mentions in Botany. In Engineering, freshman Rajiv Movva and sophomore Arjun Subramaniam both earned first awards, with Subramaniam also winning a trip to the headquarters of cloud services provider Firebase to work on his application programming interface (API).

Manan Shah, grade 10, received a first award in Computers/Mathematics, in which Vedaad Shakib won a second award and a certificate of achievement and medallion from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Sneha Bhetanabhotla, grade 10, received an honorable mention in the physics category.

In the Behavioral/Social category, junior Mary Najibi was awarded a certificate of achievement from the American Psychological Association. Sophomore Neymika Jain earned a second award in Medicine/Health/Gerontology and a certificate from ASU’s Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives.

Several Harker grade 8 students also had success at Synopsys. In Zoology, Nishka Ayyar and Srija Gadiraju both won honorable mentions, as did Ashli Jain and Sonal Muthal in the Chemistry category. Krish Kapadia and Anjay Saklecha both won first awards in Medicine/Health/Gerontology, and also received nominations to compete in this year’s Broadcom MASTERS competition.

In Behavioral/Social, Shafieen Ibrahim and Keval Shah won first awards and Broadcom MASTERS nominations. Meanwhile, Kaushik Shivakumar received a certification of achievement and medallion from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps for his project in Physics, and Cindy Wang received an honorable mention in Engineering.

Finally, Alexander Young won a first award in Biochemistry/Microbiology and received a nomination to compete in Broadcom MASTERS.

Jonathan Ma, grade 11, was selected to attend the U.S. Physics Team Training Camp this year. He was one of only 20 students chosen nationwide. Ma will travel to the University of Maryland to attend the camp from May 17-28, where the team members will improve laboratory and problem-solving skills, hear lectures by prominent physicists and work with peers.

“The competition for a position on the U.S. Physics Team is intense and each student who participated in the 2015 selection process is deserving of recognition. They are the future of America’s success in physics related fields. AAPT is honored to recognize the exceptional scholars who qualified for the team and to support their further participation in the International Physics Olympiad,” said Dr. Beth A. Cunningham, Executive Officer of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

The training camp is a crash course in the first two years of university physics. Students learn at a very fast pace. They have an opportunity to hear about cutting edge research from some of the community’s leading physicists. At the end of the training camp, five team members will be chosen to represent the U.S. in Mumbai, India, at the 46th International Physics Olympiad, July 5-12.

Last year, Harker sent four seniors to the training camp and one, Vikram Sundar ’14, made the traveling team and earned a gold medal at the 2014 International Physics Olympiad in Astana, Kazakhstan. Go Physics Eagles!

Several Harker students traveled to the California State Science Fair in Los Angeles from May 18-19, where they showcased the projects they had displayed earlier this year at the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship. In the senior division, recent graduate Neil Movva won an honorable mention in the electronics and electromagnetics category. In the junior division, grade 6 student Srinath Somasundaram took second place in applied mechanics and structures, while Alexander Young, grade 8, took fourth place in microbiology (medical). Congratulations to these hard-working science lovers!

In late June, a team of Harker rising juniors took second place overall in the 9/10 level at the national TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) competition in Grapevine, Texas. The team of Kai-Siang Ang, Neymika Jain, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam, Peter Wu and team captain David Zhu also finished second in the problem solving competition and were among the top 10 teams in the prepared presentation portion of the event. “The team had the best showing yet of any Harker team who has competed in this event,” said Harker math teacher Anthony Silk, who coached the team.

The TEAMS competition begins every year at the state level, in which students answer multiple-choice math and science questions, as well as essay questions related to the year’s chosen topic. The top three teams from each state are then invited to the national competition, which has categories for written problems, prepared presentation and problem solving.

Congratulations to middle school science teacher Thomas Artiss, who was named the 2015 Outstanding Biology Teacher for California by the National Association of Biology Teachers. Each year, the Outstanding Biology Teacher Awards recognize excellent biology teachers in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, Puerto Rico and other overseas territories. As a recipient of the award, Artiss is now eligible to attend a special honors luncheon at the 2015 NABT Professional Development Conference, to be held in November in Providence, R.I.

Established in 1962, the Outstanding Biology Teacher Award has since become one of the most prestigious annual awards given to biology and life science teachers. The award includes a complimentary one-year NABT membership, a special lapel pin and a gift certificate from Carolina Biological Supply Company.

The Siemens Foundation announced today that 13 Harker upper school students had been named semifinalists in this year’s Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. Harker had the most semifinalists of any California school. 

This year’s semifinalists are: 

Vivek Bharadwaj, Rishabh Chandra, Anthony Luo and Jonathan Ma, grade 12; Rishab Gargeya, Shasvat Jawahar, Alex Mo, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam and David Zhu, grade 11; and Brandon Mo, grade 10. 

A total of 466 semifinalists were chosen from the 1,700 submissions that Siemens received. These students are now eligible to become finalists and travel to Washington, D.C. for the finals of this year’s competition. 

A project by seniors Jonathan Ma and Sadhika Malladi, titled “Systematic Analysis of Sex-Linked Molecular Alterations and Therapies in Cancer,” was recently published by Nature Scientific Reports. Nature, one of the world’s top science publications, uses its Scientific Reports website to publish original research to a wide audience. Every manuscript submitted to Scientific Reports is peer reviewed before being published and hosted on Nature.com, which is viewed by more than 8 million unique visitors per month.

Last week, Ma and Malladi were named semifinalists in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search.

Last weekend, seniors Vivek Bharadwaj, Elina Sendonaris and Jessica Zhu, and junior Manan Shah competed in the US Invitational Young Physicists Tournament in Lynchburg, Va., where they finished as finalists. Harker won the tournament last year, so was the team to beat this year. The 2016 team was among 11 that participated in the tournament, which was held in a round-robin format in which one team, acting as the reporter, displayed a solution to a physics problem that the opposing team, known as the opponent, then investigated by discussing the strong and weak points of the solution. Naman Jindal, Alice Wu and Tong Wu, all grade 12 and Neelesh Ramachandran, grade 10, assisted the competitors.

The 2016 Physics Bowl wrapped up in May, and Harker placed second in its region in Division II (for second-year physics students) and was ranked 122 worldwide. Each year, about 10,000 students participate in the competition, which consists of a 40-question timed test. Harker students who tested for this year’s Physics Bowl were Akshay Ravoor, Ayush Pancholy, Cindy Wang, Enya Lu, Katherine Tian, Kaushik Shiavakumar, Mathew Mammen, Nishant Ravi and Rithvik Panchapakesan, all grade 9; Edgar Lin, Jimmy Lin, Neelesh Ramachandran, Shaya Zarkesh and Swapnil Garg, all grade 10; and David Zhu, Manan Shah, Misha Ivkov, Peter Wu and Steven Cao, all grade 11.

Last week, sophomore Shaya Zarkesh – via his company, Polyup, which he co-founded last fall – held an event at the upper school campus to help students develop computational thinking skills. “We were holding a workshop for students to explore searching algorithms through a presentation and a set of problems that they worked on in teams,” Zarkesh said.

Polyup teaches students “how to design efficient algorithms to solve computational problems,” he explained. “These are the sort of problems that engineers, physicists and data scientists face every day.” The company achieves this by using chatbots designed to suit the learning needs of each student. Polyup also employs what it calls “playgrounds” on mobile devices to allow users to apply computational thinking concepts to solving a variety of problems.

The company was co-founded by Zarkesh, renowned math professor Yahya Tabesh and entrepreneur Shahin Hedayat. Workshops similar to the one held at Harker have been held by Tabesh at The Nueva School, which Zarkesh said were a “huge success.” More info is available at the company’s website.

Last week, grade 7 science students put their engineering skills to the test by building airplanes in the middle school campus’ innovation lab. Teacher Raji Swaminathan had taken the students to the middle school amphitheater to try out normal paper airplanes when, she said, “Scott [Kley Contini, grades 6-8 Learning, Innovation and Design Director], who was walking by, asked me if the Innovation Lab could have helped the kids build the planes.”

The students then headed to the lab and were instructed to build planes with the wealth of materials that were available to them. Kley Contini offered the students advice on how to get creative as they worked on their aircraft. One group of students went so far as to construct a wind tunnel to test the effects of tailwinds and headwinds. “I would’ve used just a fan, but Scott came up with the idea for a wind tunnel that would channel the breeze from the fan through which the plane flew,” said Swaminathan. “It was just a fantastic experience for those of my classes who were able to go to the Innovation Lab.”

In June, Harker students Michael Kwan, Jimmy Lin, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Xie, Shaya Zarkesh, Randy Zhao and Jerry Chen, now all grade 11, were named the best team in the country at the Test of Engineering, Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) National Conference in Nashville.

TEAMS is a STEM-based competition in which high school students apply their knowledge to solve current and upcoming challenges. Each year, a theme is chosen, and students compete at various regional events before the top-ranking teams meet at the National Conference to vie for the title of Best in Nation. At the state level, teams first submit a thoroughly researched essay. At the competitions, they take a multiple-choice exam and are tasked with completing a design challenge using provided materials.

This year’s theme was space exploration, and at the Nashville event the Harker team gave a presentation on space colonization. Their essay covered the field of optogenetics (controlling cells in living tissue through the use of light), which they studied in preparation for the exam portion of the competition.

“We all researched different topics in our spare time and then gathered once a week over the summer to pool everyone’s research together and discuss our strategy going forward,” Lin told the Winged Post. “Our whole team learned a lot through working together on the group events, and it was definitely exciting to see our hard work pay off when we ultimately came out on top.”

Last week, the Society for Science & the Public announced that Harker freshmen Cynthia Chen, Aarzu Gupta and Maya Shukla were among 300 students nationwide named semifinalists in this year’s Broadcom MASTERS competition. Chen, Gupta and Shukla entered the competition last year while in eight grade. A total of 2,434 applicants entered this year’s competition.

The Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering Rising Stars) competition highlights the work of middle school scientists from across the country. The top 10 percent of middle school participants at society-affiliated science fairs are nominated to participate, and must then submit an application to enter the competition. Each application is rigorously reviewed by professionals in science, engineering and education.

Finalists are scheduled to be announced next week. Stay tuned!

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

Here is the NBC story with some great quotes from Manan!

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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!”

Raymond Banke, grade 10, recently received a distinguished honorable mention in the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Student Contest. The contest, which received more than 2,100 submissions from nearly 70 countries, recognizes and rewards the work of middle and high school students who bring awareness to issues impacting the health of the world’s oceans.

Banke’s piece, titled “Protection from the Sun?” was submitted to the art category. As a distinguished honorable mention winner, Banke was awarded a prize of $250.

In addition, upper school science teacher Kate Schafer, who acted as Banke’s sponsor during the contest, received a sponsor recognition award. Congratulations!