The ninth annual Harker Research Symposium featured a myriad of poster sessions, presentations, and corporate exhibitions in Nichols Hall and the gymnasium last Saturday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Symposium, organized by Science Department Chair Anita Chetty and leaders in WISTEM club, displayed exhibits from Cervin Ventures, Eweclid, Google, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Marvell, MuseMaze, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Palo Alto Networks, SeaLife, South Asian Heart Center, Tesla, Tynker, and various student hosts.

Throughout the day, attendees were able to walk around and engage with representatives from numerous companies at their booths, interact with students both at poster sessions and at breakout sessions, listen to keynote speakers, and participate in mini interactive demos at Stem Buddies activities.

Sahana Rangarajan (11) presented her research on the possible presence of oxygen in the atmosphere of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.

“If you think that you’re doing everything you can, there’s always more to do and better ways you could have used your time, so its a constant learning process,” she said.

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Priscilla Pan

Allison Kiang (11) reads the Symposium's program while volunteering for registration. The Harker Research Symposium, which took place on March 26, featured poster sessions, presentations, and exhibitions.

Keynote speakers included Claire Max on the topic of adaptive optics, alumni Ilya Sukhar on entrepreneurship, Nikhil Parthasarthy in a special invite-only keynote on reflections on his undergraduate experiences, and Salman Khan on education.

“For anyone who wants to go into education or anything, I would say ‘get your metaphorical hands dirty’ and go out there [and] start doing things,” Khan said.

Khan’s talk in the Auditorium was one of the most popular events; those who were unable to obtain tickets were able to view the talk from the gym, where his speech was livestreamed. For the second half of his Q&A, Khan moved to the gym to answer questions from the audience.

This year, Q&A sessions during the keynotes were conducted using Sli.do, an online application that allowed the audience to submit their questions online via a laptop or mobile device and other users to vote up the ones they most wanted answered.

Ilya Sukhar, who graduated in 2003 gave some advice to students for their futures.

“Explore a little bit.” he said. “Generally to do something extraordinary in life requires meandering off of the path.”

Lunchtime featured the annual Chemistry Magic Show, led by Rachel Freed, Andrew Irvine, Smriti Koodanjeri, and Rob Korin, the Upper School chemistry teachers. Demonstrations included the incineration of a gummy bear and the explosion of several balloons.

Another highlight throughout the day were Tesla test drives, which allowed attendees over the age of 25 to drive, and those younger to sit in on a short drive to get the feel of the cars.

“It’s always good to expose high school students to us, if they are interested in engineering and sciences, Tesla can be a great opportunity in the future,” Kim Rogers, an owner advisor at the Tesla retail store in Santana Row said.

Students that will be attending the Tanzania trip in July sold food to raise funds for charitable donations they plan to make during the trip.

“We’re raising money for several of the charities that we’ll be supporting while we’re in Tanzania, among them an orphanage, a school for which we’ll be buying a whole bunch of books, and we’ll also be providing 17 goats to the Masai villagers that we will be visiting during the trip,” biology teacher Mike Pistacchi said.

After being asked what his one piece of advice for Harker students would be, Khan responded, “I would say that throughout the rest of your education, get [your education], but also be working on things, hacking things, and doing things outside the traditional system as well.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on April 4, 2014