The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

Winged Post
Newsletter

Second Intel competition finalist in school history

Second+Intel+competition+finalist+in+school+history

On January 26, Namrata Anand (12) was announced to the school as an Intel Science Talent Search Finalist. Mark Pettinger returned with yet another check to reward her research efforts in the field of astrophysics.

The night before, Namrata’s parents told her that, no, they had not received any e-mails announcing anything important. Sorry. The next day, she found herself walking to the front of the gym to be congratulated. In reality, her mom and dad had known about her accomplishment a day in advance. “It was hard for us to keep this to ourselves, but we did not want to ruin Namrata’s surprise,” Nina Anand said.

Namrata was successfully stunned. “I was really excited. I have to be honest, I didn’t expect it at all … I feel so honored,” she said. She won the prestigious title and $7,500 for her work on the chemical composition of stars within the Andromeda galaxy.

Her research was done over the past summer at the “great astrophysics lab” at University of California Santa Cruz, with her mentor, Dr. Raja Thakurta. Two other Intel semifinalists were also under his astronomical tutelage: seniors Andrew Zhou and Kevin Zhang. Vishesh Jain had studied improvements for the diagnosis of heart disease.
“My mentor was just phenomenal… he really offered the three of us just the right amount of guidance, and he gave us access to this huge database of data,” Namrata said. “For any astrophysics project, you rely on mostly data to come to conclusions, because it’s hard to go out in the field and experiment.”

In March, she will attend the final round of the competition in Washington D.C. to compete for the $100,000 grand prize against 39 others. “If they’re actually telling the truth about President Obama, I would be psyched to meet him!” she said.

Since she was a child, Namrata knew that she wanted to be “a scientist of some sort.” Her parents knew she was applying to the Intel competition but did not put pressure on her to attain any particular goals.

“We believe that learning, discovering, and applying yourself is much more important,” her mother said.

Namrata does not view this achievement as a result of intense focus on the sciences.

“I had a great internship opportunity over the summer; it was a great chance to grow not only as a scientist but also a human being… it just happened.”
Dr. Kate Schafer, upper school science and research teacher, was extremely proud of Namrata’s success.

“I am so pleased and proud of Namrata and all the hard work she put into her project and application. This is truly an outstanding achievement. Astrophysics is a challenging field because you can’t directly interact with the environment you are studying. Our students were extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Puragra Guhathakurta at UC Santa Cruz, an outstanding mentor with resources that enabled our students to conduct research unavailable to most high school students. I would just like to congratulate all the students, teachers and mentors that put in so many long hours of research, writing and revising all to advance our knowledge of the world and universe around us,” she said.

The story will be updated in March with news of her results at the capital.

More to Discover