Schools

Intel School Science Competition has Los Altos Semifinalists

Seniors from Los Altos High School, The Harker School and Gunn High School were among the list of 300 national semifinalists in the prestigious high school talent search.

 

Los Altos has two students in the running for the top prize of $100,000 in what is arguably one of the most prestigious pre-college science competitions in the country.

The Intel Science Talent Search released the names of the 300 students who will receive a $1,000 award and go on to compete to land in a pool of 40 finalists. They were chosen from more than 1,700 entrants representing 467 high schools across the nation. 

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The competition is part of a program of Society for Science & the Public (SSP) and has seen seven alumnus go on to become Nobel Laureates, two receive the Fields Medal, five earned the National Medal of Science and more earned a host of other awards.

The competition began in 1942 in partnership with Westinghouse where it became almost a household name among the college-bound. Then, in 1998 it partnered with Intel.

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Making it to the semifinalist round is a badge of honor and the students are provided with a certificate of accomplishment to send along with college admission or scholarship applications.

From the group of 300 semifinalists, Intel will narrow that to 40 finalists who will be chosen to attend the Intel Science Talent Institute in Washington, DC from March 7–13. More judging will occur and the group will ultimately share $630,000 in awards.

Among the 300 finalists, here are the local winners and the name of their research project:

The Harker School

Andrew Luo, 17, Los Altos

The Kinematics of Andromeda’s Diffuse Ionized Gas Disk

Los Altos High School

Jerry Liu, 17, Mountain View

Modeling the Lithiation of Crystalline-Amorphous Silicon Nanowires using the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Additionally, the following students from Henry M. Gunn High School were selected:

Helen Jiang, 17

Asymmetrical and Heterogeneous Single-Particle Volume Reconstruction of the Transcription Pre-Initiation Complex using a Novel Non-Reference Based Pipeline

Laura Hsia Tung,  17

Synthesis of Novel Phosphonium-Based Ionic Liquids and Analysis of Their Properties

George Yu, 17

Feasibility of Single-Molecule Imaging with a Free Electron Laser Optimized via Genetic Algorithm

Congratulations!

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