Los Altos Students Take Home Awards in Science and Tech Competition

From elementary to high school students, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills students were recognized Sunday for their science prowess.

The Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship yielded a healthy number of Los Altos recipients at its annual competition in March, who were feted at Great America April 7.

The championship, which showcases students in Santa Clara County, draws hundreds of middle and high school students who compete in the areas of computer science, math, medicine, biology, chemistry and more.

Winners of the Synopsys Championship go on to compete in state and national competitions such as the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the California State Science Fair and Siemens Foundation.

Angela Zhang, a 2011 graduate of Monta Vista High School is an example of one who took a grand prize and best of championship home from Synopsys and went on to win a $100,000 scholarship from Siemens Foundation for her cancer research.

Synopsys Championship is affiliated with the 92-year-old organization, Society for Science and the Public, founded by renowned journalist Edward E. Scripps and California zoologist William Emerson Ritter. First called Science Service Scripps funded the project while Ritter was its first scientific director; their aim was to keep the public abreast of scientific achievements.

Nearly to 1,000 students from across the state will compete in the California State Science Fair April 15-16, including eight students from schools serving Los Altos and Los Altos Hills. Anjini Karthik won a trip to the state fair as a Grand Prize Alternate, announced at the awards event.

The Fair, which will be held in Los Angeles, is the last science fair of the academic year in California for students in grades 6 through 12. 

More than $50,000 in total awards and scholarships will be awarded to the winners who qualified through their Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship projects.

The full list of qualifying students can be found here.

Here are the 2013 Synopsys Championship recipients who attend schools serving Los Altos and Los Altos Hills students. The list of students was obtained from Synopsys, which didn't indicate Los Altos/Los Altos Hills students who attend private schools. Parents of those students who wish to have their child's name added to this list can send the information to the editor at losaltos@patch.com.

School Student Name Grade Project Title Teacher Gardner Bullis School Jay Chiruvolu 6 Are We Killing our Creeks? A Study on the Water Quality and Biotic Integrity of Permanente Creek Watershed(Environmental Sciences) Niki Mitchell Benjamin Maxwell Dillon 6 Clark Steen Webster  6 Gluten Free Brownies (Chemistry) Springer School Kenneth Stiles Derryberry 6 Did I Mention Surface Tension? (Physics) Doug Core Rohan Achyuth Katpally 6 Did I Mention Surface Tension? (Physics) Doug Core Cupertino Middle School Rajiv Krishna Nelakanti 7 How do Different Natural Dyes Affect the Longevity and Power Output of Nanocrystalline Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells? (Chemistry) Cindy Burns Rithika Srinivasan 7 Design a Robot Hand to Simulate Human Hand (Engineering)

Blach Intermediate School

Connery Danson Wood 7 Cooking with Lactose: Breaking it Down (Chemistry)
Meghan Greenbaum



Nishita Sunkara
Plastic Problems (Environmental Sciences)
Cindy Kane Los Altos High School Paul August Dennig
9 "Where's Grandma?" Indoor Wireless Navigation Systems for Alzheimer's Patients, II (Engineering)
Carol Evans Mountain View High School Yasha Ektefaie 9 Hunting the Energy Vampire: An Innovative Way to Stop Phantom Loads (Engineering)


Phil Wiechec Saint Francis High School Anjini Karthik 9 Biosynthesis of Metal Nanoparticles for Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (Physics) 
Roberta Chisam Manogna Vemulapati 9 Identification of CpG Islands in a DNA Sequence using a Hidden Markov Model Trained in MapReduce(Bioinformatics) Arpita Singhal 9 Herbalism as an Anticancer and Anti-inflamatory Agent: Characterization and Evalution of Bioavailability of Curcumin Particles (Chemistry) Kimberly Day Leela J. Amladi 10 Fail-Proof Pill Reminder System (Engineering) Chihiro Ikezi Homestead High School Maya Anusha Josyula 10 Earth's Carbon Sinks: Exploring the Effects of Melting Arctic Ocean Ice (Earth / Space Sciences) Jillian Fackrell Irfan Danial Faizullabhoy 11 Building a Sound Barrier that uses Acoustic Decoupling Noise Cancellation to Minimize Road-Noise (Engineering) Mary Anne Plano Jay G. Kamat 11 Exploring the Effect of Water Hardness on the Mpemba Effect(Physics) Ayush Mehra 11 Building a Sound Barrier that uses Acoustic Decoupling Noise Cancellation to Minimize Road-Noise (Engineering) Alex Nagase 11 Exploring the Effect of Water Hardness on the Mpemba Effect(Physics)

 

Do you have photos from the awards event at Great America? Share them here!

 

Also on Los Altos Patch:

• Los Altos/Los Altos Hills Students Make University Honor Lists
• Foothill Opens State-of-the-Art Science Center
• Los Altos High School Has 14 National Merit Scholarship Finalists

• LETTER: Could We Create A New Kind of School North of El Camino?