Students earn awards in Intel STS

Since its first Intel Science Talent Search (Intel STS) entry in the 2005 to 2006 school year, the Upper School has produced 66 semifinalists and nine finalists across the competition’s twenty divisions.

In early January, Society for the Science and Public (SSP) announced that 15 Harker seniors had qualified as semifinalists, the most produced by any secondary school this year.

For Anokhi Saklecha (‘15), one of the semifinalists, Intel STS was an opportunity to further delve further into the subject matter explored in her science classes.

“I was always very intrigued by science and medicine in class, and I wanted to get a more hands-on experience with it,” Saklecha said. “As I entered high school, I started forming more and more questions on science-based topics, and research created a pathway for me to answer them.”

Of the fifteen semifinalists, SSP named three finalists in late January. SSP selected 40 finalists in total; with three, Harker had the most out of any school in the country.

The three seniors, Andrew Jin (‘15), Rohith Kuditipudi (‘15) and Steven Wang (‘15) traveled to Washington D.C. in March to present their research in the final phase of the competition.

Wang commented on the talent search. At the Upper School, he participated in other science research events, including the Siemens competition.

“The Intel fair glamorizes science in the way that it should,” Wang said.

In his research, Wang developed a computational model to identify the different causes of colorectal cancer from patient to patient; his project “Computer-Aided Genomic Characterization of Colorectal Cancer Driver Genes for Oncogenic Transformation of Primary Colon Organoids” synthesized bioinformatics and genomics.

Kuditipudi’s project “Bayesian Times Series Analysis of Liver Disease Progression” explored the underlying causes of liver disease’s advancement into more serious illnesses, such as liver cancer.

In his project, “A Machine Learning Framework to Identify Selected Variants in Regions of Recent Adaptation”, Jin developed an algorithm to recognize mutations in the human genome.

Jin placed first in the competition’s category of global good for his research on evolutionary genetics, winning a $150,000 prize.

Applications for Intel STS 2016 will be open till Nov. 11.