The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila
“With volleyball and Medical Club, I love working with people. I get to work with people who aren't necessarily in my classes or aren't my friends specifically, but we get to work hard and work together towards a common goal. That collaboration aspect is really important to me," senior Navya Samuel said.
Humans of Harker: Cooperation through competition
“Human connection is very important to staying grounded and stable. The people around me are one of the reasons that I'm not fully burnt out, so I really prioritize keeping a good schedule for myself. Being able to prioritize the things in life that give me internal satisfaction is important to me because that's what allows me to have the drive to do good with the rest of my time. Talking to people is a way for me to replenish," senior Kashish Priyam said.
Humans of Harker: Pep in every step
“It's very important to make sure the people in your life know they're important to you. Whether that's doing small acts of kindness or just being there whenever they need you, having a really strong support system is what gets you through life, and it's a really valuable life skill to have," Sofie Marino (12) said.
Humans of Harker: Pillar of support
“My karate teachers emphasize that as black belts, we should be living up to the standard of our rank and acting as an example for the students who are lower-ranked.' When I’m helping out and someone messes up, I don't necessarily say, ‘You did this wrong, try to do this.’ I take a more relaxed approach and act out what they did a little comically. It's finding the balance between being strict and being more playful with the students," senior Claire Perng said.
Humans of Harker: Playing with purpose
“I have the ability to convey my opinions and ideas through art, which in my opinion, is the most powerful tool I have because not everyone has it. It requires me to, first of all, have an opinion or thought, and second of all, be able to convey it with this medium. Together, that is the strongest calling for an artist," senior Eva Li said.
Humans of Harker: Artistry in abstraction
Humans of Harker: Cooking with creativity
Humans of Harker: Cooking with creativity
“There's a lot of value in every moment and everyone around you. I appreciate people who just appreciate the little things. For me, I feel like everyone you meet can teach you a little bit, and that's something that I've really internalized over the years. I think that's part of why I like being around people and different communities so much. Because in each of these communities, you can learn so many different things from everyone," Olivia Xu ('24) said.
Humans of Harker: Purpose towards progress
“I get to choose how much effort and detail I put in, and that’s what you’re going to see in the end. I love that you can see the truth on paper. A lot of my work is in black and white, so I can’t rely on color to cover it up or make it more interesting — I can only rely on my skill and willingness to go into the studio and add to my piece," Katelyn Zhao ('24) said.
Humans of Harker: Envisioning the everyday
"I used to think that I have to keep doing dance just because it's what I’m known for. But now I’ve realized there’s beauty behind all the madness that happens. And it’s now a part of me, so not doing dance or not having Legos is like I’m losing a part of my identity," Luke Mehta ('24) said.
Humans of Harker: Building with style
“Why not? So many things are very foreign or unknown to us, but there’s not much to lose by just trying things. I initially wasn’t very comfortable with DECA, especially with impromptu, but the community really helped me grow out of that. And DECA is now one of my top high school memories. Just giving things a try is really worth it, and if it fails, the worst thing that can happen is you just try something else," Claire Luo ('24) said.
Humans of Harker: It’s all in the details
"Being a lifer, I really want to put my knowledge to use. Being a TEDx speaker is a really big honor in and of itself, but to be able to actually address the Harker community was really important to me because I wanted to have an impact on the place that I've been at for 13 years," Arissa Huda ('23) said.
Humans of Harker: Prescribing change
"I’ve learned discipline: practicing a lot and then knowing what your strengths are, knowing where to improve. That discipline is definitely going to stay with me. If I’m trying to get a big piece of work done in general when I'm interested in it, I'll stop at nothing to reach my goals," Linette Hoffman ('23) said.
Humans of Harker: Artistry in motion
"I have this philosophy with theater. I wholeheartedly believe that my life was made for the stage, and all my make or break moments have happened there. While some people learn best through lectures or visuals, I learn best from having a spotlight on me," Zubin Khera ('23) said.
Humans of Harker: Scripts to success
"One of the most important things for me about performing is its transformative power. There was one concert where we were singing this commission about gun violence, followed by a piece about climate change, a piece about the Holocaust. Watching the audience's expressions and how they reacted to the music we were singing was the first time that I was like, ‘Whoa, music has the power to change lives and engender positive change,’” Sawyer Lai ('23) said.
Humans of Harker: Symphony of spirit
"It’s been fun getting to know the chefs at La Mar, their team and how different cultural influences blend together. For example, they make ceviche, which is a traditional Peruvian dish, but they infuse it with many different cultures. They have a version of their ceviche which is inspired by African tastes and spices, and they also have a Japanese form of that same ceviche dish. I think it’s interesting to watch how these fusion dishes form," Alex Lan ('23) said.
Humans of Harker: Flavors of knowledge
Prakrit Jain ('22) searches for new animal species to help the environment and wildlife.
Humans of Harker: Scorpion spotter
Arnav Gupta ('22) moves a DNA construction.
Humans of Harker: Coding for a cause
“[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.
Humans of Harker: Blast of creativity
"Every single person I've interviewed for Humans of Harker has said one killer quote that has stuck with me even through four years of high school, and I think I really do internalize those messages. There are nuances in every single person's experience that makes it unique to them and also makes it a good lesson for everyone else. It's just amazing to see how much wisdom every single person at Harker has, and it's fascinating to learn about those stories," Erica Cai ('22) said.
Humans of Harker: Harmony in humanity
“Something I took away from baseball is that there's always the opportunity to bounce back when things don't go particularly right. Even the best hitters only go one for three, so being able to push through that is one of the most important parts of the game. Being able to identify what goes wrong and learning from that is important to being able to find success in the future," Mark Hu ('22) said.
Humans of Harker: The perfect pitch
Humans of Harker: Perseverance on par
Humans of Harker: Perseverance on par
It's been obviously rough, turning on the news and seeing another death, seeing another acquittal every single time … but, ‘How much can I do?’ is the question I'm asking myself. ‘How much can I help, and what impact can I have?’” Brian Pinkston ('21) said.
Humans of Harker: For the future and the present
“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.
Humans of Harker: Leading with DECA-cation
Class of 2021: Humans of Harker compilation, part three
Class of 2021: Humans of Harker compilation, part three
“I feel really good about myself when I'm relaxed and enjoying the world. There’s so much to learn about the world and so many ways to do so," Daniel Wang ('21) said.
Humans of Harker: Mapping the unknown
"I'm the person that always has a plan for everything. And then I have backups for the plan, and I have backups for the backups," Nicole Chen ('19) said.
Humans of Harker: Calendars for a cause
"I don’t ever intend on letting the internal love of life that I have leave me. As I grow up and I maintain my love for the random things I do, I know I’ll be happy– and hopefully people around me will be, as well," Mathew Mammen ('19) said.
Humans of Harker: Jack of all trades, master of fun
Humans of Harker: To dance, to feel
Humans of Harker: To dance, to feel
"The more serious side, people will never see. You'll never see who's behind one of these websites that people may be using," Neil Ramaswamy (12) said. "Several freshmen have approached me like, 'hey, you're the really funny guy at school meeting' and I'm like 'hey, yeah, nice to meet you' and at the same time they might be using an application that I've written not knowing that it's me. I kind of get that personal satisfaction knowing that there is a serious side to me, you just don't know about it."
Humans of Harker: Dueling with duality
Humans of Harker: Humanity in art
Humans of Harker: Humanity in art
“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.
Humans of Harker: Neymika Jain finds balance in life
“A lot of the time, when I’m out at nail salons, nailers ask me if I‘m Vietnamese. I say yes, but they say that I don’t speak the language and have never been back to Vietnamese, so am I really? I always felt disconnected, like I would be Vietnamese-American but never Vietnamese. When I went to Vietnam for the first time, it brought me closer to my culture. I realized I shouldn’t view myself as a different. I have to see Vietnamese-American and Vietnamese as one and the same," Haley Tran (12) said.
Humans of Harker: Haley Tran values her cultural identity
“One time, I was hiking up this giant off-trail path, and this is going to make me sound like a complete hippy, but what I was thinking at the moment was that every single tree out there must have had some sort of backstory. Even when I was walking to Shah, there was this tree right next to the building, and I was like, ‘Maybe this tree had a lot of other tree friends, but then this building came up and they had to get cut down.’ That made me pretty sad. So, when I was coming up with backstories for trees, it reminded me of my childlike innocence of playing pretend or playing with my stuffed animals because I thought my imagination would never run as wild as it once did. But, this experience made me feel happy because it’s something that I’ve lost, and I feel like I gained some of it back," Aashish Jain (12) said.
Humans of Harker: Aashish Jain finds inspiration in painting through watching Bob Ross videos
“For me, robotics has always been a great way to learn about how to build things and how things work. Honestly, that is the reason why I love robotics. When you see everything working, you look at it and say 'I helped make this happen,' which is really really gratifying," Andrew Tierno (12) said.
Humans of Harker: Andrew Tierno reflects on his passion for robotics
“A lot of being a choreographer is about digging deep, understanding, and finding out which event leads to the next, which is basically what science is. You would take a circuit and break it apart to understand each of the components, and you would do that to a song,” Sneha Bhetanabhotla (‘17) said.
Humans of Harker: Sneha Bhetanabhotla learns to connect robotics and dance
“I can be serious, and I care a lot about a lot of things, but I also just like having fun and people feeling comfortable being their true selves,” Isabella Spradlin (12) said. “You don't have to be one-sided — you can have different sides of your personality, and different moods.”
Humans of Harker: Isabella Spradlin gleans insight from sisterhood
“This is like a melting pot of Cupertino, Lynbrook, Saratoga, some people from De Anza, so you meet all kinds of people,” Rahul Mehta (12) said. “Half the time I’m not even playing with my friends, so I’m playing with random people. You start off in the beginning a bit wary of each other, and then by end you’re playing like they’re your friends. It’s kind of gradual. Like after a really cool play, you’ll high five each other, and that’s how it all begins.”
Humans of Harker: Rahul Mehta befriends others through banter
"People are always debating, you know, ‘should I go up to a higher weight or not?’ And I’ll just yell, ‘do it, you won’t,’" Tiffany Shou (12) said. "And then, you know, it’s like that challenge, and so it always pushes them pick that higher weight, and then they can accomplish it, so it’s even more gratifying."
Humans of Harker Video: Tiffany Shou pushes her limits in the weight room
“First, I start at my house,” Sparsh Chauhan (12) said. “Then, I turn on Saratoga, and it’s always crowded with traffic and stuff. That’s when I’m setting the music, checking the tire pressure, the gas. After downtown, the road gets smooth, which is when I put the windows down. I go all the way down until there’s a dip and then I go back. Even when I have stuff to do, I drive that same route every day. I don’t have to take directions. I know all the traffic times; I know exactly where I’m going.”
Humans of Harker: Sparsh Chauhan takes pride in his work
“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.”
Humans of Harker: Angel Cervantes chases his goals
“[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.
Humans of Harker: Learning to fall
“You just have to go for it. You think, 'In the future, if I think back and regret it, is that how I want to end up — or would I rather just try something and see what happens?' Usually, it turns out well,” Montek Kalsi (’20) said. 
Humans of Harker: All fun and games
“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.
Humans of Harker: Leadership and love
Humans of Harker: Grit and grind
Humans of Harker: Grit and grind
Humans of Harker: Artistic nonconformity
Humans of Harker: Artistic nonconformity
The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila
The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila
Club Events
Sophomore Chetana Pramanik and frosh Dyuthi Vallamsetty learn about the different competitive events at HOSA conferences. Categories include Health Informatics and Medical Law and Ethics.
STEM Spotlight: HOSA
by Jonathan Szeto and Charlie Wang • November 16, 2024

Officers of the Harker HOSA-Future Health Professionals chapter informed members about upcoming competition and conference opportunities on Tuesday. President...

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Talagala discusses how AI tools can hold biases as a result of skewed training data. She also answered questions about AI in cybersecurity and the workplace.
Civic Tech Club hosts machine learning expert to discuss Artificial Intelligence
by Jonathan Szeto and Charlie Wang
Former Olympian and psychologist Tere Zacher presents about how to foster and maintain a resilient mindset. “Whatever you set your mind into, you can achieve, regardless of where you come from, regardless of your age,” Zacher said.
Tere Zacher dives into injury rehabilitation at Sports Medicine Club speaker event
by Kairui Sun and Heather Wang
Astronomy club president Eric Dong (11) demonstrates the use of a equatorial mount for astrophotography. Equatorial mounts compensate for the Earth's rotational axis when taking long exposure photos of stars, preventing motion blur.
STEM Spotlight: Astronomy Club
by Charlie Wang, Multimedia Editor
Neuroscience Club President Danielle Steinbach (11) speaks about the anatomy of the brain during the lecture. The presentation is part of a series aimed to help club members prepare for the Bay Area Brain Bee competition.
STEM Spotlight: Neuroscience Club
by Jonathan Szeto and Nathan Yee
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Climate Activism
As more people turn to ChatGPT and other AI tools like Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, increased usage poses the increased threat of droughts. Global AI demand is projected to rise exponentially to over $1.5 trillion by 2030.
Global Reset: AI revolution or climate devastation?
by Ashley Mo and Jonathan Szeto

Your fingers flutter across the keyboard. Click. Enter. Bursts of AI-generated text appear, filling the screen in just a few seconds. The...

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To avoid the construction of a new swimming stadium, organizers decided to hold two Olympics swimming events in the Seine River, which has historically been unsafe for swimming due to high bacteria levels. Despite France’s €1.6 billion plan to clean the waters leading up to the Olympics, the Seine continued to fail bacteria tests.
Global Reset: “Green” policies create controversy at Olympics
by Lily Shi and Charlie Wang
Green Team co-president Kinnera Mulam draws raffle winners. Prizes included vegan baked goods from Bradley Stoll, vegan chapsticks and succulents.
Global Reset: A peek at Earth Week
by Victor Gong, Emma Li, Alison Yang, and Claire Zhao
This year alone, California has seen 39 power outages. The world consumed 176 quadrillion watt-hours of general energy in 2021, and the generation of electricity from coal emitted a whopping 868 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Sourced from World Population Review and U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Global Reset: Energy use sparks climate concern
by Ashley Mo and Claire Zhao
As the 2023 holiday season concludes and families remove the festive twinkling lights from the roof and the delicate ornaments from the tree, now is a better time than ever to consider future environmental footprints.
Global Reset: Preserve holiday magic
by Eva Cheng, Asst. Sports Editor
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Alumni Features
Dawson Chen (‘22) displays his virtual butler startup Martin. Funded by startup accelerator YCombinator, he coded the first version of Martin in the summer of 2023 alongside former classmates Harsh Deep (‘22) and Arjun Dixit (‘22).
Blooming from the STEM: Dawson Chen’s Martin pioneers AI-assisted productivity
by Kairui Sun and Nathan Yee • November 14, 2024

Lights, camera, action. Tony Stark pinches and taps his fingertips against thin air. His digital assistant, J.A.R.V.I.S., narrates a flurry of...

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Ankola works with companies around the world to provide a wide selection of cosmetic offerings. By testing products himself before offering them on the Spyra app, he ensures that the products supplied to his customers stay true to their advertising.
Blooming from the STEM: Connecting through cosmetics
by Jonathan Szeto and Vivek Moorjani
Marc Leglise (’03) snaps a selfie from the air using a camera-helmet system. His passion for skydiving connects him to his work at Columbia Sportswear, where as a senior manager of e-commerce technology, he helps people secure the gear he uses in the air.
Blooming from the STEM: Diving into e-commerce
by Katerina Matta, Co-Sports Editor
Sheena Vaswani ('04) discovered her interest in dentistry as early as high school. “I realized that dentistry was a marriage between my interests, and I didn't necessarily have to give up the artistic side of things,” Vaswani said.
Blooming from the STEM: Artistry in dentistry
by Andrew Liang and Sidak Sanghari
Jessica Dickinson Goodman (‘07), who supports and educates underprivileged women in STEM fields, holds up cards of notable women in computing. She has traveled to numerous countries in Africa and the Middle East to teach technology.
Blooming from the STEM: Activist in tech
by Sidak Sanghari and Michelle Wei
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Research Revelations
Research Revelations Episode 6: Breaking down bee learning and memory with Abby Wang
Research Revelations Episode 6: Breaking down bee learning and memory with Abby Wang
by Claire Zhao and Chelsea Xie
Research Revelations Episode 5: Shellfish safety and prediction systems with Victoria Ma
Research Revelations Episode 5: Shellfish safety and prediction systems with Victoria Ma
by Charlize Wang and Ashley Mo
This is the fourth installment of Research Revelations: Conversations with Our Student Researchers. Aquila reporters Victor Gong and Claire Zhao meet with Young Min (11) to discuss her work in cell-penetrating peptides.
Research Revelations Episode 4: Chemotherapy and cell-penetrating peptides with Young Min
by Victor Gong and Claire Zhao
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Friday Five: Underrated STEM subjects
Students chat and eat together during lunch. Every day, the kitchen staff serves over a thousand lunches within an hour.
3D Printing and Design Club president Evan Zhang (11) smiles as he explains the functionality of the 3D printer to members. To prepare the printer, users needed to preheat the print bed and load the model’s computer-aided design (CAD) file.
As part of a school-wide Wi-Fi upgrade, the IT team replaced old wireless access points with new Ruckus devices in every classroom. Members of the community should expect reliable internet connection anywhere on campus with improved speeds and security.
Harker Programming Club invited four panelists for this year's Girls Programming League Challenge. The speakers discussed their technical expertise and exposure to sexism in academia.
Honors Human Anatomy and Physiology teacher Anita Chetty uses a probe to guide a group in examining a specific part of the rat. Throughout the dissection, she checked in with each group to ensure they could clearly identify the structures.
Green Team officer Kristiyan Kurtev (11) talks on the phone with an environmentalist. Throughout the whole event, he convinced five of them to start voting more consistently.
Junior Jaden Fu hunches as he reads a textbook. “The desks are really small and the chairs don’t give enough back support," Jaden said.
White fungus, tea leaves and Gentian roots provide benefits in boosting immunity. There are almost 12,800 traditional Chinese medicines, ranging from herbs to animal products.
Students gathered in the Nichols auditorium to learn about Synopsys guidelines and requirements. Only 15 RRI and 15 non-RRI projects are allowed to be submitted through the application process.
Student researcher Nisha Padhi (10) examines a test tube of MTT solution. Over the summer, she focused on chemical synthesis of small molecules and looks forward to combining aspects of cell biology work into her future research.
Intel lost more than $30 billion in market value after its second quarter earnings report. The company announced that it would cut 15% of its workforce and slash dividends due to financial struggles.
Benjamin Xia (10) savors his ice cream with his friends after watching the class's hydrogen rockets. The ice cream lab reinforced concepts of thermodynamics and energy transfer.
As the Bay Area has largely returned to in-person pre-pandemic norms, corporations now grapple with the employment of more workers than they can provide for. Reductions in the tech workforce pose a significant challenge for both current engineers and recent college graduates looking to enter the field.
Student presenter Oliver Chen (10) talks about his project using his poster as a visual aid. Harker students from grades eight to 12 shared their research findings in the Auxiliary Gym.
A Tetris block falls down the grid, inching closer to the collection of blocks at the bottom. There were seven tetrads in total, each one with a different color and shape.
Figure 01 stands at the forefront of innovation, showcasing a level of sophistication unseen in previous humanoids. Leveraging stored information, Figure 01 makes inferences rapidly, similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4, and can also express its thoughts through a text-to-speech model.
Students and staff witness the partial solar eclipse with special solar viewers. These glasses prevent eye damage by filtering out harmful radiation from the Sun.
An NVIDIA RTX GeForce 4070 Super sits on a wooden table, donning two fans, 12 GB of memory, and a bandwidth of 504 GB/s. NVIDIA's recent success largely lies within its state-of-the-art graphics processing units. (Provided by Ivan Chen)
Upper school English teacher Beth Wahl stands in front of her bougainvillea plant, a type of tropical shrub that grows up to 30 feet tall. "Before we renovated our house and we added a second story, I dreamed of having bougainvillea that goes up two stories," Wahl said. "Now, it blooms throughout the year and creates this incredibly vibrant magenta color." (Provided by Beth Wahl)
High school coders collaborate on the novice problem set during HPC's Harker Programming Invitation in Nichols Atrium on Mar. 9. Groups of up to three students worked together to solve ten questions in two hours in the novice division.
Upper school chemistry teacher Andrew Irvine assists Arturo Vilalta (10) with the paper chromatography lab. Students determined which M&M flavors contained yellow #5 using chromatography.
William Chen '03 lectures to Green Team about sustainable farming on Stanford's O’Donohue Educational Farm. Besides talking about his own experiences, Chen also discussed the harmful effects of pesticides and herbicides, the benefits of eating organic foods, and ways to support sustainable farming.
WiSTEM members prepare to start the AI workshop on Feb. 23. Volunteers discussed logistics like screen sharing and changes in the Google Slides before the workshop.
Studies conducted by white scientists on unknowning minority communities imprinted long-lasting distrust for medical instituions. Such studies include those conducted on the Havasupai Indians and Black men in the Tuskegee experiment.
Light pollution mutes the sky over Los Angeles. “When you have city artificial lighting in the area, it brightens the night sky, just like the sun brightens the sky and turns it into day,” astronomy teacher Dr. Eric Nelson said.
Illustration by Emily Tan and Claire Zhao. Design by Victor Gong.
Brendon Hayes (11) holds a warm mug. With extreme cold climates in recent times, warm drinks have become more and more popular ways to warm up.
The Apple Vision Pro carries hyper-immersive experiences to the world of virtual reality. The headset released to all Apple stores on Feb. 2.
COVID-19 continues to mutate into new variants like the most recent JN.1 strain and remains especially active during the respiratory virus season from fall to winter. Updated vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax that came out in fall 2023 are effective against newer variants, and CDC safety precautions have largely stayed the same since last year.
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