![“[Building nerf blasters] became this outlet of creativity for me that hasn't been matched by anything else. The process [of] making a build complete to your desire is such a painstakingly difficult process, but I've had to learn from [the skills needed from] soldering to proper painting. There's so many different options for everything, if you think about it, it exists. The best part is [that] if it doesn't exist, you can build it yourself," Ishaan Parate said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/DSC_8149-900x604.jpg)
![“When I came into high school, I was ready to be a follower. But DECA was a game changer for me. It helped me overcome my fear of public speaking, and it's played such a major role in who I've become today. To be able to successfully lead a chapter of 150 students, an officer team and be one of the upperclassmen I once really admired is something I'm [really] proud of,” Anvitha Tummala ('21) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2021-07-25-at-9.50.05-AM-900x594.png)
![“I think getting up in the morning and having a sense of purpose [is exciting]. I think without a certain amount of drive, life is kind of obsolete and mundane, and I think having that every single day is what makes each day unique and kind of makes life exciting,” Neymika Jain (12) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Screen-Shot-2017-06-03-at-4.54.16-PM.png)
![“My slogan is ‘slow feet, don’t eat, and I’m hungry.’ You need to run fast to get where you are–you aren't going to get those championships if you aren't fast,” Angel Cervantes (12) said. “I want to do well in school on my tests and in track and win championships for my team. I live by that, [and] I can do that anywhere: in the classroom or on the field.”](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DSC5146-900x601.jpg)
![“[Volleyball has] taught me how to fall correctly, and another thing it taught is that you don’t have to be the best at something to be good at it. If you just hit the ball in a smart way, then it still scores points and you’re good at it. You could be a background player and still make a much bigger impact on the team than you would think,” Anya Gert (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AnnaGert_JinTuan_HoHPhotoEdited-600x900.jpeg)
![“I'm not nearly there yet, but [my confidence has] definitely been getting better since I was pretty shy and timid coming into Harker my freshman year. I know that there's a lot of people that are really confident in what they do, and I really admire them. Everyone's so driven and that has really pushed me to kind of try to find my own place in high school and be more confident,” Alyssa Huang (’20) said.](https://harkeraquila.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/AlyssaHuang_EmilyChen_HoHPhoto-900x749.jpeg)
Siemens Foundation announces semifinalists
Siemens semifinalists David Zhu (11), Shasvat Jawahar (11), Vivek Bharadwaj (12), Manan Shah (11), Jonathan Ma (12), Anthony Luo (12), Venkat Sankar (11) and Evani Radiya-Dixit (11) pose outside Nichols Hall. Semifinalists who are not pictured are Rishabh Chandra (12), Rishab Gargeya (11), Alexander Mo (11), Arjun Subramaniam (11) and Brandon Mo (10).
The Siemens Foundation named 13 Harker students as semifinalists in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology today at 9:00 a.m.
The semifinalists are seniors Vivek Bharadwaj, Rishabh Chandra, Anthony Luo and Jonathan Ma; juniors Rishab Gargeya, Shasvat Jawahar, Alexander Mo, Evani Radiya-Dixit, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Arjun Subramaniam and David Zhu; and sophomore Brandon Mo.
The Siemens Foundation announced a national total of 300 semifinalist projects today and will announce 40 finalist projects Monday.
This year’s projects come from a diverse range of subjects, including machine learning, material science and gravitational lenses.
Brothers Alexander and Brandon conducted a joint project over the summer. They communicated with their mentor Timothy Knowles through phone calls, as he works at Energy Science Laboratories Incorporated (ELSI) in San Diego.
Alexander Mo (11) and Brandon Mo (10) pose for a picture after learning that their project was one of 300 semifinalists chosen by the Siemens Competition. The Siemens Foundation named 13 Harker semifinalists this year, the most of any California school.
“Our project was a thermal conductivity project,” Alexander said. “We used carbon and glass fibers to make improvements in the fields of thermal conductivity and insulation.”
Other semifinalist projects included Anthony’s work on discovering gravitational lenses and senior Jonathan’s implementation of a recently discovered algorithm that can better predict patients’ responses to cancer medications.
“[The current algorithm in use] trains on each of the drugs separately – that is, it learns a separate model for each drug,” Jonathan said. “[My] algorithm uses the correlations between responses to drugs in order to generate a more accurate model of drug sensitivity.”
Arjun also conducted research concerning cancer, although in a different field. He and a Saratoga High student, Rishi Verapaneni, (12) worked on a method to isolate tumors.
“What I was doing was finding tumors in MRI images and ‘segmenting’ them,” Arjun said. “Given just one point by radiologists at the center of a tumor, we would find the outline of the tumor. This helps cancer diagnosis, treatment planning – it’s an important step.”
Evani also focused on cancer as well, and with her partner developed an algorithm to determine whether breast cancer tumors are benign or malignant. She worked with Dr. Andrew Beck, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.
“The hardest part of the project was probably trying to get better results – optimizing and strong accuracy,” Evani said. “In the end were able to get a strong classification for the tumors.
It was really awesome because it was great to see that our hard work really paid off.”
Last year, 13 Harker students became semifinalists and four students, Jason Chu (‘15), Vineet Kosaraju (12), Sadhika Malladi (12) and Jonathan, were named regional finalists. Two years ago, Andrew Jin (‘15) and Steven Wang (‘15) were chosen as both regional and national finalists.
The Siemens Foundation will release a list of 40 finalist projects on Monday.
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