This past summer, senior Evan Kim brought home a gold medal at the 15^th International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) in Kutaisi, Georgia as part of the US team. 

The IOAA is an annual competition for the top astrophysics students from over 40 countries. At the IOAA competitors compete in three rounds—theory, data analysis, and observational—which collectively capture the necessary skills in Astronomy and Astrophysics. In the theory round, contestants must answer a series of long answer questions analyzing astrophysical systems, ranging from eclipsing binaries to relativistic jets. In the data analysis round, contestants apply their theory knowledge and number crunch through real world astronomical data to make conclusions. And in the observational round, the most studied for round, contestants must identify various astronomical objects by sight, on both star charts and in the night sky. 

From Math Club Advisor Mr. Kyle Ostlie:

Each year, the math club participates in the American Mathematics Competitions(AMC) which is the first of a series of three challenging competitions in high school mathematics that determine the United States team for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The AMC is one of the largest mathematics competitions in the nation with roughly 160,000 students participating, and we spend most of the year in math club preparing for it.

This year we had 29 students participate and 15 students qualified for the next round, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) on February 7^th. Only the top 10% of AMC scores in the nation are invited. This is by far the most students we have had qualify. Even more exciting, we had 3 students score in the top 1%!

Please congratulate the following students when you see them.

9^th and 10^th Grade Division Qualifiers:

Ekaansh Agrawal (Top 5%)

Pranav Kannepalli (Top 1%)

Sarthak Lodha

Reese Long (Top 5%)

Wesley Lu (Top 5%)

Neil Parikh (Top 5%)

Alexander Peev (Top 1%)

Sarah Wen

Winston Zhou (Top 5%)

 

11^th and 12^th Grade Division:

Yue (Beth) Ding

Evan Kim (Top 5%)

Sebastian Kumar (Top 5%)

Chris Ma

Rui Meng (Top 1%)

Abhiram Yakkali

Congratulations to Tesla STEM senior Evan Kim, who was named one of the 40 finalists among nearly 2000 students who participated in the 82nd Regeneron Science Talent Search. The final competition will take place in Washington, DC, in March 2023.

Congratulations to Ms. Kate Allender and her two science scholars, Evan Kim and Harish Krishnakumar, who have been named as two of the top 300 young scientists of the 82^nd Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS).  The Regeneron Science Talent Search is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious pre-collegiate science competition, providing a prominent forum for original research that is recognized and reviewed by a national jury of professional scientists.  Additionally, Evan Kim has advanced to the final level of competition which will take place in Washington D.C. the week of March 9^th.  All 40 finalists will be evaluated rigorously by judges to determine the top ten winners, competing for the top prize of $250,000. They will present their original science research project to the public and will have the opportunity to meet prominent leaders and scientists through field trips and other special events.

 

Evan Kim’s Project:  ScGAN:  A Generative Adversarial Network to Predict Hypothetical Superconductors

Harish Krishnakumar’s Project:  Analysis of Ring Galaxies Detected Using Deep Learning with Real and Simulated Data

Each year, the math club participates in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) which is the first of a series of three challenging competitions in high school mathematics that determine the United States team for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The AMC is one of the largest mathematics competitions in the nation with roughly 160,000 students participating, and we spend most of the year in Math Club preparing for it.
 
This year Tesla STEM had 29 students participate, and 15 students qualified for the next round, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) on February 7th. Only the top 10% of AMC scores in the nation are invited. This is by far the most students we have had qualify. Even more exciting, we had 3 students score in the top 1%! Please congratulate these scholars:
 
9th and 10th Grade Division Qualifiers:
Ekaansh Agrawal
Pranav Kannepalli
Sarthak Lodha
Reese Long
Wesley Lu
Neil Parikh
Alexander Peev
Sarah Wen
Winston Zhou

11th and 12th Grade Division Qualifiers:
Yue (Beth) Ding
Evan Kim
Sebastian Kumar
Chris Ma
Rui Meng
Abhiram Yakkali

 

Science Olympiad is a set of 23 events including biological, physical, chemical and earth sciences, as well as engineering, for teams of up to 15 students. They compete in groups or 2 or 3 in every event. 

The “season” is divided into two:  invitationals, which allow for practice against different levels of competition, and regional/state/national finals, which are more formal events.

This year, Tesla STEM Science Olympiad participated in four invitationals, with excellent results:

• The Boyceville SO Invitational, in December, was a remote event hosted by Boyceville HS (of the Wisconsin Boycevilles).  Tesla STEM entered 3 teams, and our 1^st team finished in 10^th place out of nearly 150 teams.
• Also in December, the team traveled south for the Camas SO Invitational.  Team STEM won 1^st Place, Team Leaf earned 5^th Place, Team Root earned 17^th Place, and Team Bud earned 24^th Place.
• In January, the team spent a day with aircraft at the Raisbeck Aviation SO Invitational.  Team STEM won 1^st Place, Team Leaf earned 5th Place, and Team Root earned 22^nd Place.
• Finally, in February, we sent one team to cold, rainy Berkeley for the Golden Gate Science Olympiad. This is one of two national-level invitationals on the West Coast and, in a field of 50 teams that included recent national champions, Team STEM earned 7^th Place (and the 6^th Place trophy, because we have two teams from Troy HS to beat!).

We have listed students’ results at each event below. It is hard to overstate how proud we are of these teams for much more than the results—it is a joy to see the leaders build a culture and esprit de corps that are just as important as the results they produce. 

This is a schoolwide effort--we have support from our admin, our office staff (Ms. O'Brien and Ms. Ferguson), our health staff (Ms. Welcome and Ms. Johnson), and a bunch of teachers that indulge our teams' requests for equipment use, materials, and opportunities to practice. We are grateful.

Specific Event Results:

Boyceville SO Invitational (out of 148 teams):

• Team STEM:  10^th Place overall
• Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 2^nd place
• Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 5^th place
• Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 2^nd place
• Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 6^th place
• Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1^st place
• Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 6^th place
• Green Generation: Olivia Wang & Divij Aswinkumar, 4^th place
• Wifi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 6^th place

 

Camas SO Invitational (out of 25 teams):

• Team STEM: 1^st place overall
• Team Leaf: 5^th place overall
• Anatomy & Physiology: Rithani Saravanakumar & Shuhui Yang, 3^rd place
• Astronomy: Evan Kim & Aashray, 2^nd place; Harish Krishnakumar & Rajit Joshi, 3^rd place
• Cell Biology: Shuhui Yang & Grace Zhao, 2^nd place; Prerana Kota & Angela Wang, 3^rd place
• Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1^st place; Rajit Joshi, Parik Venkataraghavan, 5^th place
• Codebusters: Olivia Wang, Sebi Kumar, & Divij Aswinkumar, 1^st place
• Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 3^rd place; Sachita Ghosh & Keerthi Rajesh, 4^th place
• Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 2^nd place
• Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 1^st place

• Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1^st place

• Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 1^st place
• Flight: Tyler Chen & Shrey Goel, 4^th place
• It’s About Time: Farzad Hasan, 4^th place
• Forensics: Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1^st place; Prerana Kota & Tyler Chen, 2^nd place
• Forestry: Olivia Wang & Neha Madanagopal, 2^nd place
• Green Generation: Prerana Kota & Brenda Li, 1^st place; Divij Aswinkumar & Olivia Wang, 2^nd place
• Remote Sensing: Aashray & Evan Kim, 1^st place
• Rocks & Minerals: Aashray & Sami Khan, 2^nd place; Brenda Li & Saharsh Bhargava, 3^rd place
• Bridge: Andy Pham & Neha Madanagopal, 5^th place
• Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1^st place
• It’s About Time: Andy Pham & Divij Aswinkumar, 5^th place
• Scrambler: Siddhant Porwal & Andy Pham, 4^th place
• Solar Power: Sree Sarvepalli & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 1^st place
• Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 3^rd place
• Wifi Lab: Sami Khan & Evan Kim, 4^th place 
• Write It Do It: Madeleine Vanderheiden & Mehuli Nath, 4^th place

 

Raisbeck Aviation Invitational (out of 27 teams):

• Team STEM: 1^st place overall
• Team Leaf: 5^th place overall

• Anatomy & Physiology: Rithani Saravanakumar & Shuhui Yang, 3^rd place
• Astronomy: Evan Kim & Aashray, 2^nd place; Madeleine Vanderheiden & Rajit Joshi, 5^th place
• Bridge: Neha Madanagopal & Andy Pham, 1^st place; Sriram Marasanapalle & Mehuli Nath, 3^rd place
• Cell Biology: Shuhui Yang & Grace Zhao, 1^st place
• Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 2^nd place
• Codebusters: Olivia Wang, Sebi Kumar, & Divij Aswinkumar, 1^st place
• Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1^st place
• Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 2^nd place; Sachita Ghosh & Keerthi Rajesh, 4^th place
• Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar and Sami Badal Khan, 1^st place
• Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1^st place
• Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 2^nd place
• Flight: Rithani Saravanakumar & Neha Madanagopal, 3^rd place
• Forensics: Anjali Sreenivas & Rithani Saravanakumar, 1^st place; Prerana Kota & Tyler Chen, 2^nd place
• Forestry: Olivia Wang & Neha Madanagopal, 1^st place; Naomi Stahl & Katya Rukhlinskaia, 4^th place
• Green Generation: Prerana Kota & Brenda Li, 5^th place
• It’s About Time: Andy Pham & Divij Aswinkumar, 1^st place
• Remote Sensing: Aashray & Evan Kim, 1^st place
• Rocks & Minerals: Aashray & Sami Khan, 2^nd place; Brenda Li & Saharsh Bhargava, 4^th place
• Scrambler: Siddhant Porwal & Andy Pham, 2^nd place
• Solar Power: Shrey Goel & Madeleine Vanderheiden, 1^st place; Sree Sarvepalli & Aashray, 2^nd place
• Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 2^nd place
• Wifi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 3^rd place

 

Golden Gate Science Olympiad (out of 53 teams):

• Team STEM:  7^th Place overall
• Chemistry Lab:  Sami Badal Khan & Sebi Kumar, 2^nd Place
• Disease Detectives:  Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 8^th Place
• Dynamic Planet:  Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 7^th Place
• Environmental Chemistry:  Ashwin Kaliyaperumal & Sebi Kumar, 6^th Place
• Experimental Design:  Siddhant Porwal, Sree Sarvepalli, & Anjali Sreenivas, 3^rd Place
• Fermi Questions:  Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 1^st Place
• Green Generation:  Divij Aswinkumar & Olivia Wang, 7^th Place
• Remote Sensing:  Aashray & Evan Kim, 1^st Place
• Trajectory:  Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 4^th Place

 

From coach Matt Sturtevant:

The Tesla STEM Chess Club/Team finished their regular season Mid-February in the KingCo chess league, finishing in 5^th place and earning a bid to the State Team Tournament held this last weekend in Stanwood, Washington.

The Team competed in 2 rounds (60 minutes per player) Friday evening and another 3 rounds (90 minutes per player) on Saturday.

These young adults represented their district and school extremely well, exhibiting great sportsmanship and teamwork throughout the weekend.

I am happy to report that our Team finished 6^th in state, earning 16.5 out of a possible 25 points.  The top team finished with 18.5.  Please congratulate these students:

Board 1:  Anthony He

Board 2:  Stephanie Velea

Board 3:  Aakash Banerji

Board 4:  Sean Ge

Board 5:  Vignesh Srinivasan

 

From advisor Andrew Ivy:

This past Saturday (March 4) was the Regional National History Day competition, held at Evergreen Middle school, and attended by 23 of our students who produced 12 different projects.

NHD is an annual competition where student conduct primary source research on a topic of their choosing, but in conjunction with a specific annual theme. They present their work in a variety of formats, from historical papers to scripted performances.  This year’s theme was “Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas,” and 8 of our entries qualified to go on to the state competition.

Please take opportunity to congratulate the following students – and perhaps offer your expertise based upon your knowledge of their topics.  Maybe some day they will thank you when they are giving their acceptance speech at the Oscars.  I keep waiting…

Druhin Bhowal, Individual Documentary – Sowing the Seeds of Progress: The Green Revolution and its Unintended Consequences

Arihant Singh, Ethan Yu, Teddy Dong, Ziang Chen, William Gong, Group Documentary – From Atrocities to Accountability: The Nuremberg Trials as a Frontier in International Justice

Cindy Yang, Individual Exhibit – Crossing the Western Frontier: Chinese Labor on the Transcontinental Railroad

Nakul Rajpal, Individual Exhibit – The Frontier of Redlining in Seattle

Brooke North, Prakshi Shukla, Group Exhibit – Words Were Her Weapon: Ida B Wells and the Fight Against Lynching

Saachi Sharma, Samantha Novitski, Group Performance – In the Wasatch Valley: A Historical Fight for Women's Rights

John Bannon, Research Paper – The Seattle Jazz Frontier: The Success of the African American Community in Shaping the American Identity

Anson Chen, Research Paper – Taking on the Titan: the Progressive Era Pioneers who Brought Down Rockefeller’s Standard Oil

State competition is April 22.

Two Tesla STEM students won the Silver Key Award at the 2023 Scholastic Art and Writing Contest. 

Junior Rui Meng has won The Silver Key Critical Essay Award for his work about “technology, war, and the destruction from war”.

Freshman Naman Mutalik Desai has won The Silver Key Award for his memoir entry titled The Best Apology is Changed Behavior.

“The Region-at-Large West Writing program is administered by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers in New York City with the support of adjudication partners from around the country. This remote program serves all students located or attending school in the western United States where the regional Awards are not administered by a local Affiliate Partner.” (Scholastic Art and Writing Awards)
 
Congratulations to Rui and Naman!!

On Saturday 25 February, Tesla STEM HS sent three teams to the Regional Science Bowl, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Labs.

Team 3 (Eva Jain, Saharsh Bhargava, Cindy Yang, Krishna Senthilkumar & Jas Singh) finished in 8th place,

Team 2 (Prerana Kota, Reese Long, Shuhui Yang, Aakarsh Balla, & Anson Chen) finished in 6th place, and

Team 1 (Evan Kim, Aashray, Sami Badal Khan, Sebi Kumar, & Tejas Pakalapati) finished in 1st place! 

Because they won, Team 1 will head to Washington, D.C. for the National Science Bowl in April 2023!  They have won this difficult competition in 3 of the past 4 years.

Please congratulate all of these students!

On a rainy Thursday in March, a six-student team of Tesla STEM students competed outdoors (and got wet) in the King County Envirothon.  They earned the highest score in three of the five events and earned 1st place in the competition!

Please congratulate Aashray, Saharsh Bhargava, Madeleine Vanderheiden, Sami Badal Khan, Johan Karukayil, and Anson Chen, who will travel to beautiful Longbranch, WA, in May to participate in the State Envirothon.

From Math Club Advisor Mr. Ostlie:

Last month we had 15 students participate in the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), and we just got our results back. Just participating in the competition was a big accomplishment, but we had 3 students qualify for the next round of testing, the USAMO, from which students will be selected for the national Mathematical Olympiad Program!

Please congratulate Rui Meng, Alexander Peev, and Reese Long  

This is a huge accomplishment! To put it in perspective, the series of examinations started with roughly 160,000 students taking the AMC, then only 6500 students qualified to take the AIME, and now these 3 are in the rare company of only 558 participants invited to take the USAMO. Our students will be competing against the top mathematical teen minds in the country. We have only had one other student ever make it this far.

The USAMO is a proof-based mathematics examination that will take place on both Tuesday, March 21^st and Wednesday, March 22^nd during the school day. Each day consists of 3 questions over 4.5 hours.

From instructor and advisor Ms. Kate Allender:

Please congratulate our Tesla STEM scholars on a tremendous showing at CSRSEF over the weekend of March 11-12, which was a hybrid event. The first day was held remotely over zoom, and then 16 projects were selected to move onto finalist judging in person.  Students raked in a record-breaking 24 category awards including 1 grand prize winner who won a bid to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). More than 50% of the category awards were awarded to Tesla STEM students.

It is important to note that even if they did not receive a prize, ALL students who participated put forth a huge amount of time and effort and I am so impressed with our students' perseverance, dedication, and passion for their projects.

The following students received the following awards:

Behavioral and Social Sciences

1^st place: Prisha Agarwal, Self-esteem and Social Anxiety of South Asian Adolescents with Varying Acne Severity*

2nd place: Pranay Nookala and Tejas Pakalapati, EEG-analysis of Brain Activity in Individuals with Varying Levels of Social Media Usage*

3rd place: Samantha Novitski, The Relationship Between Different Genres of Media Consumed to Burnout Symptoms Reported 

4^th place: Saachi Sharma, Quantifying Depression: An art-based approach to reducing the self-report bias in diagnosing depression using Koch's Baum Test and color theory

 

Biomedical Engineering and Translational Health

3rd place: Mitra Junu, Pollen Coated Microneedle Patch to Desensitize Patients to Pollen Allergies Using Immunotherapy 

4th place:  Anushka (Annie) Adhikary, NEURAID: Identification of Postnatal Presymptomatic Neuroimaging Biomarkers for Autism Through Recurrent Neural Network-Based Image Analysis of Functional and Structural T1 MRI Data Towards Enhanced Autism Diagnosis

 

Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (COMP)

2^nd place:  Shivani Sama*, Reconnect: A Computational Approach to Using DBS to Combat Neurodegenerative Disease Through Induced Plasticity

 

Biology Sciences

2nd place: Aditi Kalluru*, Impact of Vitamin C on Chemically Induced Mouse Tumor Cells of Squamous Cell Carcinoma

3rd place: Eshaal Omar, Evaluation of horse discomfort in English and Western riding style tack

 

Environmental Sciences and Technology, Energy, Math & Design

2nd place: Sophia Callo, Red Light for Sleep Quality and Performance in Gymnasts

3rd place:  Divij Aswinkumar, Using Machine Learning to Predict the Power Conversion Efficiency of Perovskite Solar Cells

4th place:  Aaryan Dhingra, Mycoremediation: Employing Aspergillus Niger to Remove Aluminum Ions From Soil Contaminated With Coal Incineration Fly Ash

 

Earth and Environmental Science

3rd place:  Willem Magee, Predicting PM2.5 Concentrations using Meteorological Data

4th place:  Saraswathy Amjith, A Novel Multimodal Approach to Illegal Logging Detection

 

Engineering Technology and Math Science

1^st place: Nikki Taleghani*, Carbon Dot and Cyanoacrylate Fuming Method for Latent Fingerprint Detection

3^rd place:  Yutaro Urata, Generating Novel Bioplastics Using GAN

4^th place:  Shriya Tiku, Ham Radio Antenna Communication Set-up for First Responder Communication during Disaster Relief

 

Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics

2nd place: Nikhar Khamesra, Bio-flocculants in Microplastic Water Filtration

 

Robotics & Intelligent Machines

2^nd place: Ansh Bayappu*, An Everting Vine Robot with a Pneumatic Soft Gripper

3^rd place: John Karaca, Ensemble-Based Learning Model for Deepfake Detection

4^th place: Srikrishna Gurumurthy, Development of a Machine Learning Model To Predict the Presence of Advanced Liver Fibrosis in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

 

Systems Software and Embedded Systems

2nd place: Krish Katre*, Virtual Reality for ADHD: Using Technology to Enhance Learning and Attention

4th place: Anisha Vaish, Automated Pill-Dispenser to Improve Medication Compliance Efficiency and Accuracy

 

...and congratulations to one of the five GRAND PRIZE WINNERS who won the extraordinary honor of competing at ISEF....Nikki Taleghani for her project on Carbon Dot and Cyanoacrylate Fuming Method for Latent Fingerprint Detection. Nikki will compete along with approximately 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions, and territories IN PERSON in Dallas, TX this May. Students at ISEF are awarded the opportunity to showcase their independent research and compete for on average $5 million in prizes.

From Instructor Rebecca Townsend:

Our anatomy/biomedical engineering classes had three groups earn honorable mentions in the national ExploraVision Competition this year. For ExploraVision, the students predict what a current technology will be like 10+ years in the future. There are approximately 2,000 teams competing each year. (They award one national winner, five regional winners, and honorable mentions per age level.)

1. Using Virtual Reality to Treat ICU Psychosis (Bhavya Nandikanti, Tanvi Sapar, and Tanvi Anand)
2. OHCT: One Hair Cell at a Time – Using Atoh1 Molecules to Reverse Hearing Loss (Madhu Rasiah, Aubrey Grove, and Nuha Rahman)
3. HemoSyn: A Novel Approach to Immune Functionality in Hematology (Manovay Sharma, Ayush Singh, and Arihant Singh)

Please congratulate these students if you see them!

From advisor Ms. Ryfka Schafer:

Four students from the Tesla STEM Economics Club competed in the National Economics Challenge and placed 3^rd in WA State!

Feel free to congratulate these students when you see them!

• Vidit Khandelia
• Rithvik Koppolu
• Vaibhav Attre
• Aahil Irfan

They’ve all won money, and they now move onto the semi-finals, competing against the top teams from every state. If they place in the semi-finals, they advance to the finals in-person in New York City with all travel costs covered by the National Council on Economic Education.

From Mr. Matthew Kruse:

The following students participated in the 2023 WMEA All-State and 2023 NAfME All-Northwest honor ensembles:

 

2023 NAfME All-Northwest:

Manami Chiba - 2023 NAfME All-NW Band - Flute

Chris Ma - 2023 NAfME All-NW Orchestra - Violin

Davis Yang - 2023 NAfME All-NW Orchestra - Bb Soprano Clarinet

 

2023 WMEA All-State:

Guhan Kumar - 2023 WMEA All-State Orchestra - Violin

Varsha Mantravadi - 2023 WMEA All-State Concert Band - Percussion

Nakul Rajpal - 2023 WMEA All-State Concert Band - Oboe

Sarah Youn - 2023 WMEA All-State Concert Band - Flute

 

Please congratulate these students!

From advisor Ms. Bethany Kankelborg:

The Washington State Chapter of the Technology Student Association held it’s competition in late March in SeaTac Washington. Tesla STEM High School’s chapter had 64 students attend the event where they tested their creativity, communication, professionalism, and technical expertise against their peers from across Washington State. This year’s Conference had over 4000 students from both middle school and high school attend, the largest in WTSA’s 40 year history. All of our scholars brought their best work to their events and made their school proud. Below I have listed all the finalists and semi-finalists from our school some of whom will attend the National Competition in Louisville, Kentucky at the end of June.

In addition our own Tiana Dumitrescu was elected to serve as Washington TSA’s Vice President for the 2023-24 school year.

Please join Ms. Zebrack and me in congratulating these students on their achievements.

Forensic Science:

• 2^nd Place:  Anjana Punniamoorthy and Divij Aswinkumar
• Top 12: Aaryan Dhingra and Ritu Doshi

Coding:

• Top 12: Saraswathy Amjith and Rithvik Koppolu
• Top 12: Vasudha Narayanan and Emir Akture

Music Production:

• Top 5: Colin Xie

Digital Video Production:

• Top 12: Samyuktha Krishnan, Saahiti Mamidipaka, and Harshita Raja

Audio Podcasting:

• Top 5: Likitha Nanduri and Abhigna Nimmagadda
• Top 5: Sanjana Katti

Webmaster:

• 2^nd Place: Aryaman Rtunjay, Raghav Kalyana Sundaram, Pranav Kannepalli, Achintya Agrawal, and Shruthika Balasubramanian

Biotechnology:

• Top 5: William Bo, Aaryan Dhingra, and Ritu Doshi
• Top 12: Tiana Dumitrescu, Prakshi Shukla, and Lauren Wetzel

Data Science and Analytics:

• 1^st Place: Rishika Gautam
• Top 5: Shivani Sama and Annie Adhikary
• Top 5:  Raghav Kalyana Sundaram and Aryaman Rtunjay

Architectural Design:

• Top 12: Vrinda Sankarakumar
• Top 12: Artur Sobol, Denys Davydenko, Willem Magee, and Grigory Shatalin

Board Game Design:

• 1^st Place: Brenda Li and Keerthana Radapuram
• Top 5: Laura Shang, Sanskriti Sinha, Pallavi Thiruveedu, and Shreeyaa Muhunthan

Engineering Design:

• 2^nd Place: Ekansh Arora, William Bo, Aaryan Dhingra, Farzad Hasan, and Saahil Menta
• Top 5: Divya Ramu, Shivani Sama, Shriya Tiku, and Annie Adhikary

Children’s Stories:

• Top 12: Iris Dey and Vivian Li

Virtual Reality Visualization (VR):

• 2^nd Place: Vivaan Pradhan and Krishnaprasath Senthil Kumar
• 3^rd Place: Aryaman Rtunjay and Raghav Kalyana Sundaram

VEX Robotics:

• 1^st Place: Pranay Nookala and Farzad Hasan

Geospatial Technology

• 2^nd Place: Siddhant Porwal and Anusha Sharma
• Top 5: Prakshi Shukla, Lauren Wetzel, and Tiana Dumitrescu

Software Dev:

• Top 5: Ryan Chhabra, Rithvik Koppolu, and Saraswathy Amjith

From advisor Mr. Andrew Ivy:

This past Saturday 14 students from Tesla STEM competed in the State level competition for National History Day.  There were 8 different projects, including research papers, documentaries, exhibits and a performance, and all but 2 of those made the “finals” round of judging. 

Two of those pieces of work qualified for the National competition, held at the University of Maryland, June 11-15.  And so please congratulate:

Samantha Novitski and Saachi Sharma for their second-place finish in the Group Performance Category.  Their piece was titled "Journalist Emmeline B Wells: The Frontier of the Women’s Rights Movement in the Wasatch Range.”

Cindy Yang  for her second-place Individual Exhibit entitled: “Crossing the Western Frontier: Chinese Labor on the Transcontinental Railroad.”

Also, John Bannon won a cash award for the best use of Regional/Local archives for his project entitled: “The Seattle Jazz Frontier: The Success of the African American Community in Shaping the American Identity.”

This overall strong performance by Tesla STEM students (including 2 “just missed” third-place finishes), resulted in Tesla STEM being acknowledged as the 2023 Washington State History Day Outstanding School, Senior Division.

Let me hear you say Huzzah!!

Ivy

On the perfect date (April 25), Tesla STEM High School hosted its first Estimathon. The competition was fierce, the answers were approximate and, in the end, the food and fame made it all worthwhile, especially for the winners:

1st Place:  Reese Long (competing solo!)

2nd Place:  Kshitij Rao, Andy Pham & Steven He

3rd Place:  Kedar Venkatachalam, Jai Sainani & Shiven Abhyanker 

In all, more than 50 students participated and a good time was had by all. Congratulations also to Pranav Teegavarapu, Evan Kim, and Sami Badal Khan, who organized the event, hosted it, and wrote the questions.

Students in the top 4 automatically advance to the national competition in Atlanta, GA this summer. Those in 5 – 10 have the potential to attend.

 

Presentations:

Banking and Financial Systems: 1^st  Pia Dave and Kaavya Trivedi

Broadcast Journalism: 5^th Omid Faradahl, Laya Nair and Divya Singh; 3^rd place Kshitij Rao, Anirudh Seshardi, Rohan Singh, 1^st place Pia Dave and Kaavya Trivedi

Business Ethics: 10^th Vidit Khandalia, Rithvik Koppolu and Ayaan Kumar

Business Financial Plan: 10^th Abhinav Nadupalli and Alekhya Nidadavolu

Business Management: 4^th Shriya Tiku and Anusha Pandey

Business Plan: 7^th Aaryan Bondre, Gyan Dave and Karina Kejriwal

Coding and Programming: 6^th Ayaan Hussain, Tejas Pakalapati and Siddarth Pallovola; 5^th Divij Aswinkumar, Rishi Dilip and Vasudha Narayanan

Data Analysis: 10^th Pearly Agarwall and Gayathri Pillai

Digital Video Production: 4^th Kshitij Rao, Anirudh Seshardi and Rohan Singh

E-Business: 9^th Aahil Irfan and Saathvik Somujayabalan

Electronic Career Portfolio: 4^th Harini Vijeyanandh

Future Business Leader: 6^th Tarun Mahadevan

Hospitality Management: 6^th Rajiv Arvind, Tejaswi Erattu and Pranav Kannepalli

Impromptu Speaking 4^th Kaavya Trivedi

Introduction to Business Presentation: 1^st Varshini Hari and Layla Kaim

Introduction to Social Media 8^th Madison Desilva, Shriya Kapala and Liya Sebastian

Job Interview 2^nd Harini Vijeyanandh

Marketing: 8^th Achintya Agrawal, Samyuktha Krishnan and Saranya Pammi; 3^rd Rishi Dilip, Tashfiq Rashad and Sourish Singh; 1^st Divij Aswinkmar, Nimai Belur and Pranay Nookala

Mobile App Development: 7^th Krish Katre and Tejas Pakalapati, 2^nd place Farzad Hasan, Mitra Junu and Rohit Karthik

Public Speaking 5^th Cindy Chen

Publication Design: 5^th Karina Kejrwal, Aarav Khanna and Isayiah Lim

Sales Presentation 2^nd: Aaryan Bondre, Gyan Dave and Tanush Contractor

Social Media Strategies: 6^th Anshu Aggarwal, Varsha Mantravadi and Prakshi Shukla, 2^nd Rishi Dilip, Tashfiq Rashid and Sourish Singh, 1^st: Aarav Khanna, Karina Kejriwal and Bhavya Nandikanti,

Sports Management: 8^th Immaz Khan, Chaithu Thandu and Pranav Sayal

Spreadsheet Applications: 1^st Vasudha Narayanan

Website Design: 2^nd Anshu Aggarwal and Saathvik Somujayabalan, 1^st place Shreya Pandey and Sarah Wen

 

Objective tests

Advertising 5^th Anusha Pandey

Business Communications 4^th Vasudha Narayanan

Computer Problem Solving 2^nd Roby Matta

CyberSecurity: 8^th Sarah Wen

Economics 2^nd Aahil Irfan, 1^st Vidit Khandalia

Introduction to Business Concepts: 9^th Kaushal Dabbiru, 4^th Winston Zhou

Introduction to Information Technology: 9^th Regan Hendrickson

Introduction to Marketing Concepts 9^th Regan Hendrickson

Introduction to Parliamentary Procedure 3^rd Alekhya Nidadavolu

Networking Infrastructure 3^rd Rithvik Koppolu

Personal Finance 1^st Vidit Khandalia

Securities and Ethics 5^th Vidit Khandalia

UX Design 6^th Achintya Agrawal, 4^th Madeline Tsai, 1^st Rohit Karthik

 

Phew! What a list!

From Chemistry teacher Mr. Rick Herzog:

Congratulations to Sebi Kumar, Evan Kim, and Aashray (Chegu Vijay Aashray).

In March they took the United States National Chemistry Olympiad local Puget Sound Section test. Sebi and Evan qualified to move on to the next level, while Aashray was chosen as a runner up.

In April Sebi and Evan took the National exam. Sebi scored in the top 20 of about 1000 students from around the country and has been chosen to attend the Summer Study Camp which will be held June 4-17. The top four students will represent the US team in the International Olympiad.

From Jennie Mayer, the Education Committee Chair, American Chemical Society - Puget Sound Section:  “In the many years (a couple decades, I believe!) Prof Bhat has administered this program through the Puget Sound Section, no student from our section has held this honor before. We are very proud of Sebastian and his hard work and dedication.”

Please congratulate Sebi, Evan, and Aashray when you see them.

This year, our entire 9th grade class created Map Stories for the annual ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest. 

One team of seniors submitted a project that won 1st place:

Druhin Bhowal & Siddhant Porwal, Fjord Estuaries: Washington's Hidden Gems (Link: https://bit.ly/3KSpD2o)

Four teams of 9th-graders also were recognized:

Madeleine Vanderheiden, Impacts of Hydroelectricity Generation on Salmon (Link: https://bit.ly/41N97Y2)

Mina Liu, Net-Zero (Link: https://bit.ly/3oxsiHf)

Ekaansh Agrawal, Electrify Your Drive: The Future of Transportation (Link: https://bit.ly/41u3dvs)

Sree Sarvepalli, Protect the Puget Sound (Link: https://arcg.is/3USC1DO)

In addition, the following project won 1st place in the Health Science division of the Washington Tracking Network Youth Science Contest:

Keerthi Rajesh & Mehuli Nath, Lung Cancer in Washington State (Link: https://arcg.is/rLi4L)

Please congratulate these scholars!

From Advisors Ms. Ryfka Schafer and Dr. Melissa Wrenchey:

So happy to report how our students are doing in the LWSD Teen Startup Competition to-date. Of 22 initial entries across the district, our school contributed 6 entries. Of our 6 entries, 3 made it into the next round with investors. Melissa and I will update you further in mid-October on how our 3 semi-finalist teams did and if we have anyone advancing to the finals to win $2,500 from venture capitalists.

Hats off to all the students who submitted an application from our school:  Mehek Sathe, Adithya Vemulapalli, Josh Shergill, Leonardo Riberio de Brito, Alexander Potra, Mohammed Mendahawi, Saishree Devineni, Alex Mineeva, Hrudai Krishna Thungathurthi, Anisha Vaish!

Those advancing to the semi-finals: Josh Shergill, Leonardo Ribeiro de Brito, Alexander Potra, Mohammed Mendahawi, Alex Mineeva, Anisha Vaish

Senior Ateeq Ramlan worked with two colleagues from Redmond High School to develop Whale Watchers, an app to help Puget Sound orca populations. The team's prototype placed in the top ten in the U.S. They will participate in the Global Innovator Challenge in Fall 2021.

Regional Competition Round:

The Tesla STEM Economics Club, advised by Ms. Ryfka Schafer, competed in the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business investment competition. Out of 1300 teams from across the world, one of our teams earned a place in the top 50 teams that will participate in the global semi-finals.  The team included 11th graders William Gong, Samiullah Khan Badal Khan, Sidharth Ganesh, Harini Vijeyanandh, Pranav Teegavarapu, and Gautham Iyer.

In the semifinals, this team will present their investment strategies and answer questions from a panel of investors and bankers. They will compete against teams from Indonesia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and China.

Our Science Olympiad “Invitational Season” is winding down. In a few national-level competitions, our “Tesla STEM Green” team has finished:

• 7^th (Boyceville, WI, out of 85 teams),
• 3^rd (BirdSO, out of 159 teams), and
• 12^th (Southern California, out of more than 250 teams);

Our Magenta and Blue teams did quite well, too.

From FBLA Advisors Ryfka Schafer and Lori Zebrack:

FBLA had their regional conference yesterday and the following students have qualified for the State conference in April.   A huge thank you to Michael Ivers and Matt Travis for their help chaperoning.

Presentation Events:

Banking and Financial Systems: Pia Dave and Kaavya Trivedi 5^th place

Broadcast Journalism: Omid Farahdel and Ani Seshadri 6^th place

Business Management:  Diya Karthic, Mehek Sathe, Nihan Tatli 3^rd place;  Eesha Kunisetty 2^nd place

Data Analysis: Kavya Srikumar 2^nd place

Digital Video Production: Kshitij Rao, Ani Seshardri, Rohan Sing 5^th place

E-Business: Annie Adhikary 6^th place;  Omid Farahdel, Pranav Sayal, Brian Yin 4^th place

Electronic Career Portfolio: Cindy Chen 2^nd place

Entrepreneurship: Emma Shi, Osheen Tikku 3^rd place

Graphic Design: Diya Karthic, Mehek Sathe, Nihan Tatli 6^th place; Kshitij Rao, Manovay Sharma, Ayush Singh 5^th place

International Business: Divij Aswinkumar, Farzad hasan 5^th place

Introduction to Business Presentation: Vasudah Narayanan, Anjana Punniamoorthy 5^th place;  Prakshi Shukla, Nikki Taleghani 3^rd place

Introduction to Public Speaking: Nitya Kakulamarri 6^th place; Annie Adhikary 4^th place, Anshu Aggarwal 3^rd place

Introduction to Social Media Strategy: Abhinav Nadupalli, Alekhya Nidadavolu 6^th place;  Ahanya John, Megha Ramachandran, Alexa Rorrer 5^th place

Job Interview: Eesha Kunisetty 2^nd place

Marketing:  Rishi Dilip, Aahil Irfan, Sourish Singh 6^th place; Shivani Godse, Sneha Murali 5^th place

Public Service Announcement: Gayathri Pillai, Shivani Sama, Shriya Tiku 2^nd place;  Sarah Wen 1^st place

Public Speaking: Nikki Taleghani 2^nd place

Publication Design: Aaryan Bondre, Tanush Contractor, Gyan Dave 4^th place

Sales Presentation: Rhea Kuppa, Shreya Pandey 5^th place; Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti 4^th place;  Divij Aswinkumar, Saathvik Somujayabalan, Harini Vijeyanandh 3^rd place

Social Media Strategies: Cindy Chen, Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti 3^rd place; Gauri Raman, Divya Singh 1^st place

Sports and Entertainment Management: Gyan Dave, Aarav Khanna, Isayiah Lim 4^th place

Website Design: Kohki Kita 3^rd place

Objective tests

Accounting I: Kohki Kita

Advertising: Hrudai Thungathurthi 5^th place; Sneha Murali 4^th place

Agribusiness: Katelyn Ye 1^st place (from LWHS but part of our chapter)

Computer Problem Solving: Keshav Acharya 5^th place, Michael Yu 4^th place, Rohit Karthik 1^st place

Cybersecurity: Michael Yu 3^rd place

Economics: Isayiah Lim 5^th place

Human Resource Management: Felix Hallmann 4^th place; Eesha Kunissetty 3^rd place

Introduction to Business Communication: Vasudha Narayanan 1^st place

Introduction to Financial Math: Divya Ramu 6^th place; Johan Karukayil 5^th place

Introduction to Information Technology: Johan Karukayil

Journalism: Shriya Tiku 6^th place

Network Infrastructures: John Karaca 5^th place;  Michael Yu 3^rd place

Organizational Leadership: Isha Rajpul 5^th place

UX Design: Kohki Kita 4^th place

Tesla STEM High School (TSHS) hosted its first B-division Science Olympiad Invitational on January 30. More than 250 students from 22 middle school teams across the country participated in this event, including LWSD teams from Redmond, and International Community School, and Evergreen middle schools, as well as teams from California, Michigan, and Alabama.

The goal of an invitational is to help students prepare for regional, state, and national competitions. Normally, an invitational is held in-person at the hosting school, and while the TSHS team made every effort to host a joint event for both in-person and online competitors, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 forced the invitational to be online-only. All middle school teams competed using the same online platform that will be used in the Science Olympiad regional and state events, which allowed TSHS to grade, rank, and announce results on the day of competition!

You can view the awards ceremony here.  Thanks to everyone who supported this effort, from ringleaders Yuchen Li, Anjali Sreenivas, and Katie Chan, to event supervisors and graders, including Evan Kim, Aayush Sheth, Olivia Wang, Sebi Kumar, Rithani Saravanakumar, Prerana Kota, Cheguvijay Aashray, Grace Zhao, Sahaana Sridhar, Saharsh Bhargava, Siddhant Porwal, Divij Aswinkumar, Harish Krishnakumar, Sami Badal Khan, Phillip Araujo, Shuhui Yang, and Maxwell Soh.

Please join us in congratulating our outstanding young women who received 2022 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing: 

• Anjali Sreenivas, National Honorable Mention

The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing builds a talent pool for the growing technical workforce and helps academic and corporate organizations celebrate diversity in computing by honoring young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Award recipients are selected based on their aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing; leadership ability; academic history; and plans for post-secondary education.

A quick shout out to our scholars who will be representing Tesla STEM High School in their respective Washington Music Educators Association All-State Honor Ensembles this weekend in Yakima, WA.

• Anson Chen - 2022 WMEA All-State Wind Symphony
• Manami Chiba - 2022 WMEA All-State Concert Band
• Guhan Kumar - 2022 WMEA All-State Chamber Orchestra
• Chris Ma - 2022 WMEA All-State Symphony Orchestra
• Varsha Mantravadi - 2022 WMEA All-State Concert Band
• Diya Modi - 2022 WMEA All-State Treble Choir
• Natalie Qiu - 2022 WMEA All-State Treble Choir
• Nakul Rajpal - 2022 WMEA All-State Concert Band
• Alec Rothkowitz - 2022 WMEA All-State Concert Band
• Alex Takagi-Stewart - 2022 WMEA All-State Jazz Band
• Davis Yang - 2022 WMEA All-State Wind Ensemble

From History Club advisor Mr. Ivy:

This Saturday past (5 March 2022), several Tesla STEM students were judged on their entries at the East Puget Sound NHD Regional Competition and they did very well.  The theme this year was Debate and Diplomacy in History and each of the Tesla STEM entries finished 1^st or 2^nd and will progress on to the State competition later this spring. 

Anson Chen, Senior Historical Paper: Lines in the Sand: Failures and Consequences of the Partition of the Ottoman Empire  (2^nd Place)

Alec Rothkowitz, Benjamin Moskalensky, Connor O’Rourke, David Soto, Senior Group Exhibit: Forming New Frontiers in Seattle: The Debate for Fair Employment in Boeing from 1935-1949.  (1^st Place)

Druhin Bhowal, Senior Individual Documentary: Shattered Land: How Diplomacy, Debate, and the Round Table Conferences Shaped the Fate of India 1930-1932.(2^nd Place)

William Gong, Ziang Chen, Teddy Dong, Ethan Yu, Arihant Singh Senior Group Documentary:  A Welcome Beacon in the Dark Night: How Debate and Diplomacy in Czechoslovakia Sparked the Passage of the Marshall Plan. (2^nd Place)

 

From Biology Club advisor Mr. Danaee:

A total of 8 bio club students participated in the USABO Open Exam, the first of two rounds of challenging exams. Following the Semifinal, twenty Finalists are invited to a residential training program where they learn advanced biological concepts and exacting lab skills at the USABO National Finals. Ultimately, four students earn the right to represent the USA at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO), a worldwide competition involving student teams from over seventy countries.

We have three students who qualified as semifinalists for the USABO Open Exam, meaning that they scored in the top 10% of students nationally.  Congratulate (and wish good luck) to:

Maxwell Soh
Rohan Iyer
Aashray Chegu Vijay

From Ms. Rebecca Townsend:

The following students received Honorable Mention awards for the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision contest. The contest has students predict the evolution of a technology (for my class, a biomedical tech) into ten years in the future. Congratulations to the following students, who placed in the top 10% nationwide!

3D Bioprinted Blood Vessels for Surgical Transplant

• Suhas Kannam
• Claire Boshaw
• Jasmine Ku
• Meagan Pearson

A Novel Diagnostic Tool for Measuring Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tension

• Irene Lau
• Lauren Kaplita
• Neelum Jawanda

Integrating Nanoparticles into a Transcranial Electromagnetic Cap to Treat Alzheimer’s Disease

• Tayla Belikoff
• Esha Bangur
• Garan Tantasirikorn
• Jessica Wang

The Fantastic Future of Fishy First Aid

• Catherine Park
• Jolie Chan

Microbubble Technology’s Future in Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment and Gene Therapy

• Noelle Hall
• Maile Hori
• Nidhi Munikote

The following students placed at the TSA State competition.

Sci Vis:  Adhya Kona, 2nd place

Digital Video Production:  Kshitij Rao & Steven He, 4th place; Siddhant Porwal, Manas Kanakala & Mohit Soni, 5th place

Engineering Design:  Gaya Pillai, Rishika Gautam, Shivani Sama & Annie Adhikary, 2nd place

Board Games:  Anjana Punniamoorthy & Vasudha N, 2nd place

Children's Stories:  Anusha Sharma, 1st place

Data Science & Analysis:  Rishika Gautam, 1st place

Geospacial Tech:  Druhin Bhowal, Siddhant Porwal & Mohit Soni, 1st place

Places 1-3 will compete at the National competition this summer.

The Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl happened last Saturday in virtual fashion, with great results:

• Team 1 won the competition! The team of Sebi Kumar, Evan Kim, Sami Badal Khan, Yuchen Li, and Rohan Iyer had the highest score in each of the seven rounds and comfortably defeated Redmond HS in the final, 132-110.
• Team 2 finished in 4th place! This team, Prerana Kota, Cheguvijay Aashray, Reese Long, Tejas Pakalapati, and Arihant Singh, was the highest-finishing second team.
• Team 3 finished in 7th place! This team, Eva Jain, Danyuan Wang, Shuhui Yang, Aakarsh Balla, and Johan Karukayil, was the only third team to advance to the round of 7 teams (the quarterfinals).

Team 1:

We are proud of these scholars!

 

From Ms. Kate Allender:

Please congratulate our Tesla STEM scholars on a tremendous showing at CSRSEF last Saturday, March 19-20, which was held remotely this year.  Students raked in 24 awards including 2 grand prize winners who won bids to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). It is important to note that even if they did not receive a prize, ALL students who participated put forth a huge amount of time and effort and I am so impressed with our student's perseverance, dedication, and passion for their projects.

The following students received the following awards:

Behavioral and Social Sciences

1^st place: Cindy Chen, Facial and Emotional Recognition Among Caucasian and East Asian Adolescents

2nd place: Aastha Shah, Evaluating the Relationship Between Stress and Impulsivity in a Mathematical Context 

3rd place: Vijaya Sripada, Using Various Inputs of Smell to Reduce Depression Score in Alzheimer Patients

4^th place: Praharsha Manda, Development of the Education Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Biomedical Engineering and Translational Health

1^st place:  Rhea Kuppa, 3D Printing Bio-Inspired Heart Valves to Increase Efficiency of Perioperative Care

2nd place: Aubrey Grove, Assessment of Yoga Therapy of Mindfulness-Based Therapy Interventions of Symptom Severity and Quality of life in a Cohort of Adults with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

3rd place: David Gershony, Combatting Anxiety in Dental Offices Using Virtual Reality

Software, Embedded Systems, Robotics

2^nd place: Edward Zhou, Dampening Phantom Shockware Jams in Mixed-Autonomy Traffic Via Deep-RL Control of Autonomous Vehicles

Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (COMP)

1st place: Anjali Sreenivas, A Machine Learning Approach to Identifying Blood-Based Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

3rd place: Anya Vaish, Bioinformatic Analysis to Find a Universal Sequence from SARS-CoV-2 Genomes for the Potential Development of a Pancoronovirus Vaccine

Organismal Biology

3rd place: Danyuan Wang, Using Machine Learning Methods to Estimate the Distribution of Harmful Invasive Phytoplankton

Chemistry, Earth, Environmental Sciences and Technology

1^st place: Arihant Singh and Druhin Bhowal, It's Flaming Out: Using Artificial Intelligence to Emulate Critical Aspects of Wildfire Growth 

2nd place: Evan Kim, Utilizing a Generative Adversarial Network to Predict Hypothetical Superconductors

Biomedical, Molecular and Cellular Biology

3rd place: Tanvi Sapar and Shivani Godse, Creating a Structural Model of SaSrtA-Inhibitor Complex to Predict Efficiency of Class A Sortase Enzyme Inhibitor Molecules

Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics

1st place: Harish Krishnakumar, Analysis of Ring Galaxies Detected Using Deep Learning with Real and Simulated Data

Mechanical Engineering

3^rd place: Anisha Vaish, Automated Pill-Dispenser to Improve Medication Compliance Efficiency and Accuracy

Special Category Awards:

Regeneron Biomedical Sciences Award ($500): Anjali Sreenivas, A Machine Learning Approach to Identifying Blood-Based Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

American Psychological Association (APA) Award: Karina Kejriwal, The Impact of Credibility When Hitting "Purchase Now"

Materials Science special category Award: Evan Kim, Utilizing a Generative Adversarial Network to Predict Hypothetical Superconductors

American Meteorological Society Award: Suyash Mothukuri, Diagnosing Precipitation from IR Satellite Images 

Stockholm Junior Water Prize: Siddhant Porwal, Predicting Waterfall Forms Through Feature Engineering and Model-Selection Machine Learning

and

Monisha Krothapalli, Engineering a Surface Flow Constructed Wetland to Evaluate Efficiency for Combatting Water Scarcity

and congratulations to two of the five GRAND PRIZE WINNERS who won the extraordinary honor of competing at ISEF....Druhin Bhowal and Arihant Singh for their project on It's Flaming Out: Using Artificial Intelligence to Emulate Critical Aspects of Wildfire Growth and Anjali Sreenivas for her investigation on A Machine Learning Approach to Identifying Blood-Based Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. Both Druhin/Arihant and Anjali will compete along with approximately 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions, and territories IN PERSON in Atlanta, GA this May. Students at ISEF are awarded the opportunity to showcase their independent research and compete for on average $5 million in prizes.

To close, I am so very proud of all our students. And thank you again for all your support and guidance with these scholars - it is truly an honor to work with such intelligent, professional, and outstanding colleagues. 

Kind Regards, Kate

On Saturday 26 March, four Tesla STEM scholars, Aashray, Atharv Dixit, Yuchen Li, and Maxwell Soh, ventured to the University of Washington for the Orca Bowl.

Twelve teams competed. Tesla STEM won all 9 matches they played to capture their second straight Orca Bowl championship and qualify for the National Ocean Sciences Bowl in May!

On Saturday 5 March, 36 teams participated in the Northwest Regional of the Washington Science Olympiad, with great results:

• Tesla STEM Green finished in 2^nd place (behind Bothell Blue) and qualified for the State Championship.
• Tesla STEM Magenta finished in 6^th place (behind Bothell White) and also qualified for the State Championship.
• Tesla STEM Blue finished in 18^th place and would have qualified for the State Championship (by finishing in the top half of all teams), but only two teams from any one school are allowed to move on.

Science Olympiad is played by teams of 15 students who compete in pairs and trios across 23 total events. They are stack-ranked in each event and the team with the lowest sum of rankings in the 23 events wins. The State Championship will be held on Saturday 9 April.

Of the 23 events at Regionals, Tesla STEM teams won medals in 20 events for finishing in the Top 8, as follows:

Anatomy & Physiology:  Rohan Iyer & Anjali Sreenivas, 7^th (Green)

Astronomy:  Harish Krishnakumar & Evan Kim, 1^st (Green)

Cell Biology:  Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 1^st (Green); Shuhui Yang & Sahaana Sridhar, 7^th (Blue)

Chemistry Lab:  Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1^st (Green)

Code Analysis:  Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth, 3^rd (Green); Matthew Lam & Farzad Hasan, 6^th (Magenta)

Codebusters:  Annanya Unnikrishnan, Ananya Soni & Matthew Lam, 8^th (Magenta)

Detector Building:  Divij Aswinkumar & Farzad Hasan, 2^nd (Magenta)

Disease Detectives:  Anjali Sreenivas & Maxwell Soh, 2^nd (Green), Eva Jain & Krish Katre, 8^th (Magenta)

Dynamic Planet:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1^st (Green); Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 6^th (Blue); Matthew Lam & Ethan Liao, 8^th (Magenta)

Environmental Chemistry:  Yuchen Li & Sebi Kumar, 1^st (Green); Prerana Kota & Siddhant Porwal, 7^th (Magenta)

Experimental Design:  Anjali Sreenivas, Aayush Sheth & Harish Krishnakumar, 3^rd (Green)

Forensics:  Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1^st (Green); Prerana Kota & Ananya Soni, 6^th (Magenta)

Green Generation:  Divij Aswinkumar & Prerana Kota, 1^st (Magenta); Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 2^nd (Green)

It’s About Time:  Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 5^th (Green)

Ornithology:  Katya Rukhlinskaya & Shuhui Yang, 5^th (Blue), Vidit Khandelia & Matthew Lam, 8^th (Magenta)

Remote Sensing:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 2^nd (Green)

Rocks & Minerals:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1^st (Green)

Trajectory:  Siddhant Porwal & Abhiram Yakkali, 2^nd (Magenta); Katie Chan & Shivank Dutt, 6^th (Green)

WiFi Lab:  Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 2^nd (Green); Eva Jain & Vidit Khandelia, 6^th (Magenta)

Wright Stuff:  Marcin Anforowicz & Abhiram Yakkali, 3^rd (Magenta)

The team gratefully acknowledges the support of Ms. Duenas, Mr. Crowe, Ms. Townsend, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Chan in providing building access, lab and equipment access, and coaching.

From Faculty Advisor Mr. Andrew Ivy:

On Saturday April 30, the Washington State National History Day competition was held at Lake Washington High School with over 500 students in attendance. 11 TESLA Stem students competed as individuals and groups in several categories in this year’s competition, after having succeeded at a regional competition held in February. Two of the four entries took first place and qualify for the National Competition in June, which, sadly, will be entirely remote this year.

Senior Group Exhibit category: Connor O’Rourke, Ben Moskalensky, Alec Rothkowitz, & David Soto  

1st place and qualify for Nationals, also won $100 award for best use of local archives. 

The Exhibit, on the subject of the first African Americans hired at Boeing is titled, Forming New Frontiers in Seattle: The Debate for Fair Employment at Boeing from 1935 – 1949

Senior Group Documentary: William Gong, Teddy Dong, Ethan Yu, Arihant Singh and Ziang Chen   

1^st place and qualify for Nationals. 

Their Documentary is titled, A Welcome Beacon in the Dark Night: How Debate and Diplomacy in Czechoslovakia Sparked the Passage of the Marshall Plan

Senior Historical Paper: Anson Chen,  

3^rd place

Title of his Paper:  Lines in the Sand; Failures and Consequences of the Partition of the Ottoman Empire 

Senior Individual Documentary: Druhin Bhowal,

7^th place

Title of his Documentary:  Shattered Land: How Diplomacy, Debate and the Round Table Conferences Shaped the Fate of India, 1930-1932

Shout out to Karen Schaeffer and Melissa Wrenchy for design advice and help with printing the materials for the Senior Exhibit entry.

Congratulations to Siddhant Porwal and Druhin Bhowal, who were the Washington State High School Winners for the ArcGIS Online Competition for 2022! 

Their work will be submitted to ESRI to compete against the winners from other states. ESRI will make a decision later in May or early June.

See their work at Giants of the Puget Sound: The Southern Resident Orca Whales (arcgis.com)

From Ms. Kate Allender:

Please congratulate our young scholars who participated in the 65th Annual Washington Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) which was held remotely on Saturday and Sunday, March 26-27 as well a second round of finalist judging on April 2nd. We had 3 student projects receive ISEF bids and place in the top seven best projects of the whole fair!!  Anjali Sreenivas received a bid to ISEF and CSRSEF, Druhin Bhowal/Arihant Singh also received an ISEF bid at CSRSEF, and Evan Kim and Harish Krishna Kumar received ISEF bids at WSSEF. This means that 4 projects from Tesla STEM will be going to ISEF!!

The Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) will be held in Atlanta, GA from May 7-13. ISEF is the world largest 9-12 science and engineering fair that typically represents 80+ different countries and students compete for millions of dollars' worth of prizes. It is important to note that while ISEF bids are incredibly note-worthy, so are ALL research projects that students completed across the board during their junior year. Please congratulate ALL students who competed at WSSEF - everyone worked so hard and deserves to be commended. 

To summarize, we had a great showing of 1st place award winners (21) along with other awards to produce a grand total of 60 awards won by our T-STEM scholars! You can see these awards and project titles listed below.

Cindy Chen,  Facial and Emotional Recognition Among Caucasian and East Asian Adolescents

• 1^st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Akul Garg and Luca Jovcic, Correlation Between Social Media and Anxiety in High School Students Using the SCARED

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Aubrey Grove, Assessment of Yoga Therapy of Mindfulness-Based Therapy Interventions of Symptom Severity and Quality of life in a Cohort of Adults with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

• 2^nd place in Translational Medical Sciences Category, Senior Division

Druhin Bhowal and Arihant Singh, It's Flaming Out: Using Artificial Intelligence to Emulate Critical Aspects of Wildfire Growth 

• 1st place in Earth and Environmental Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Sigma Xi Scientific Research special category award
• Special Note - advanced to 2^nd round of Finalist judging on April 2nd. Only 1 of 20 projects out of over 300 that competed in fair to advance to this round for consideration in awarding an ISEF bid. 

Sneha Murali, Using an Epidemiological Model to Determine Impact of Manual and Digital Contact Tracing on Preventing COVID-19 Disease Spread

• 2^nd place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category, Senior Division

Danyuan Wang, Using Machine Learning Methods to Estimate the Distribution of Harmful Invasive Phytoplankton

• 1st place in Plant Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Statistical Thinking special category award

Ananya Soni,  The Effect of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy App (Happify) on Adolescent Anxiety

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Anjali Sreenivas, A Machine Learning Approach to Identifying Blood-Based Biomarkers for Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category, Senior Division
• Sigma Xi Scientific Research special category award
• Yale Scientific and Engineering Association Award
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• Silver Medalist Winner - placed 2nd in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!

Anya Vaish, Bioinformatic Analysis to Find a Universal Sequence from SARS-CoV-2 Genomes for the Potential Development of a Pancoronovirus Vaccine

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category, Senior Division

Hahwon Chue, Rubber Tire Leachate Effect in Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish

• 1st place in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement

Shree Karunagaran Mobile Application to Improve the Cognition of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease Patients  

• 1st place in Biomedical Engineering Category, Senior Division

Karina Kerjiwal, The Impact of Credibility When Hitting "Purchase Now"

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Evan Kim, Utilizing a Generative Adversarial Network to Predict Hypothetical Superconductors

• 1st place in the Materials Science category, Senior Division
• Olympic College STEM Award
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!

Praharsha Manda, Development of the Education IAT

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

David Gershony, Combatting Anxiety in Dental Offices Using Virtual Reality

• 1st place in Translational Medicine Category, Senior Division
• WA State Dental Association of Oral Health award

Emily Liu, Type 1 Diabetes Alters Perineural Net Assembly Surrounding Hypothalamic Glucoregulatory Circuitry

• 1st place in Biomedical and Health sciences category, Senior Division

Shivani Godse and Tanvi Sapar, Creating a Structural Model of SaSrtA-Inhibitor Complex to Predict Efficiency of Class A Sortase Enzyme Inhibitor Molecules

• 1st place in the Chemistry category, Senior Division
• Special Note - advanced to 2^nd round of Finalist judging on April 2nd. Only 1 of 20 projects out of over 300 that competed in fair to advance to this round for consideration in awarding an ISEF bid. 

 Adhya Kona, An Evolutionary Origin Study Based on Genetic Homology

• 2^nd place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category, Senior Division

Harish Krishna Kumar, Analysis of Ring Galaxies Detected Using Deep Learning with Real and Simulated Data

• 1st place in Physics and Astronomy category, Senior Division 
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!

Monisha Krothapalli, Engineering a Surface Flow Constructed Wetland to Evaluate Efficiency for Combatting Water Scarcity

• 1st place in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Category, Senior Division
• US Stockholm Junior Water Prize
• Water Purveyor Association for Water Quality special category award

Bhavya Nandinkanti, Using the Art of Kuchipudi to Treat Symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social sciences category, Senior Division
• Dr. Devagupta - Henrietta Lacks special category award

Siddhant Porwal, Predicting Waterfall Forms Through Feature Engineering and Model-Selection Machine Learning

• 1st place in the Environmental Sciences category, Senior Division
• MU Alpha Theta special category award
• NASA Langley Research award
• US Stockholm Junior Water prize

Nuha Raman and Madhu Rasiah, Stand Up To Stigma: ADHD in Women

• 3^rd place in Behavioral and Social sciences category, Senior Division

Rhea Kuppa, 3D Printing Bio-Inspired Heart Valves to Increase Efficiency of Perioperative Care

• 1st place in Biomedical Engineering category, Senior Division
• ASM Materials Education Foundation special category award
• Statistical Thinking special category award

Divya Singh, Combatting Depression Using the Gut-Brain Axis Via Probiotic Treatments

• 1st place in Biomedical and Health sciences category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement

Miles Martinez, Memory of Notes by Hand Versus Keyboard

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social sciences category, Senior Division

Aastha Shah, Evaluating the Relationship Between Stress and Impulsivity in a Mathematical Context 

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social sciences category, Senior Division

Pierce Zhang, Computational Prediction of Oncogenic Mutations

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division

Edward Zhou, Dampening Phantom Shockware Jams in Mixed-Autonomy Traffic Via Deep-RL Control of Autonomous Vehicles 

• 1st place in the Robotics and Intelligent Machines category, Senior Division
• City of Bremerton Mayors award
• Special Note - advanced to 2^nd round of Finalist judging on April 2nd. Only 1 of 20 projects out of over 300 that competed in fair to advance to this round for consideration in awarding an ISEF bid. 

Rithani Saravanakumar, Machine Learning Guided Selection of Bioinks for 3D Printing of Tissue Scaffolds

• Absci-Scientific Unlimited Special category award

Ghousia Shahzad, Impact of Physical Activity on Personality and Emotions

• 2nd place in Behavioral and Social sciences Category, Senior Division

Akhila Bourampeta, Oxytocin as a Strategy to Enhance the Effectiveness of the Satiation Signal, Cholecystokinin, to Reduce Food Intake in High Fat Diet-Fed Rats

• 3rd place in Biomedical and Health sciences Category, Senior Division

Kai Vanderlip, A Scientific Look into Mental Visualization and Improved Performance in Taekwondo

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division

Laya Nair, Parkinson’s Disease: A Risk Prediction Model Using Inflammatory Bowel Disease  

• 2^nd place in Biomedical and Health Sciences category, Senior Division

Sanya Sahni, Overexposure to Maternal Cortisol during Gestation and its Influence on the Regulation of HPA axis (relationship with stress) in Female Adults

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division

Gauri Raman, Using Bright Light Therapy to Effectively Treat Night Eating Syndrome

• 3^rd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division

Vijaya Sripada, Using Various Inputs of Smell to Reduce Depression Score in Alzheimer Patients

• 2^nd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division

Keshav Acharya, The Relevance of Learning Styles in Problem-based Learning

• 2^nd place in Behavior and Social Science category, Senior Division

Thank you all for your continual support and amazing work you do with these students in all classes. It truly is a team effort to help these students accomplish such amazing research. I am honored to work with you all.

Thanks, 

Kate

Congratulations to the LWSD and Tesla STEM High School students who won awards at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) and were featured on Geekwire in May (link omitted)

From Ms. Jenai Sheffels:

Please join me in congratulating Tesla STEM students for their winning entries in the Holocaust Center for Humanity’s Writing, Art and Film Contest!  

This year, the center received almost 600 entries representing 46 schools! Winning entries are posted on the Holocaust Center for Humanity website linked here. 

There will be a special Awards Ceremony available to join online (same link as above): Sunday, June 12 10:00 AM-11:30 AM

Art 9th-12th Grade:

1st Place: Cameron Yetzer  (art attached above—the actual 3D sculpture is in my classroom 😊)

Film 9th-12th Grade: (yes, we swept the category!)

1st Place: Maxwell Soh   Maxwell_Soh.mp4

2nd Place: Phillip Araujo   Philip Klaus and Paula.mp4

3rd Place: Rohan Iyer   Rohan I Final Project Video.mp4

ALL Tesla STEM seniors created art or film this year and the art is proudly displayed on the back wall of my classroom.  You are welcome to come by and marvel at their talents.  In the words of HCH, “By participating in the contest, students are carrying on the stories of Holocaust survivors, sharing the lessons of the Holocaust, and making an impact.”  I am so proud of all of them!

 

From Mr. Andrew Ivy:

I want to take a moment and let you know that Adhya Kona, an 11^th grader here at STEAM, has been selected to join the Seattle Youth Poet Laureates cohort for the 2022-23 year.  Over Memorial Day Weekend, at Folklife at the Seattle Center she participated in the first event for this a group, a workshop and a chance to give readings of her works.

When you see Adhya, pass on your congratulations.

A video of Adhya's Folklife reading is here;  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bxsn-P1LYP4BsR1X2j33VyyP_BhM53zx/view

And a description of the program from Seattle Arts & Lectures is here:

The Seattle Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) program aims to identify youth writers and leaders committed to poetry, performance, civic and community engagement, education, and equity across the Puget Sound region.

The Youth Poet Laureate, along with their YPL cohort, has numerous opportunities and platforms to share their powerful voices, their leadership, and love of Seattle at regional events throughout the course of the year.

The Youth Poet Laureate also publishes a poetry collection, released in May by Poetry NW Editions, when the next Youth Poet Laureate of the following year is announced. All students selected as finalists will also be invited to be part of a year-long cohort of poets working together in workshops, on collaborative print projects, and at public readings.

Tesla STEM 11th-grade student Kai Vanderlip was featured in the Sunday Seattle Times for his work, Day of Remembrance- Japanese Internment Camps, helping educate elementary school students in our district (link omitted).

In April, three Tesla STEM students took the USA Earth Sciences Olympiad (USESO) Open Exam. One Tesla STEM student, Chegu Vijay Aashray was among the top 40 students who took the exam. Aashray earned an invitation to the USESO training camp, which is an event where top scholars learn from distinguished alumni (including Tesla STEM's own Yuchen Li, '22) and leading researchers in earth science.

Particular thanks to Mr. Arny Leslie who helped the students study for the exam and gave them new ways of looking at earth systems interactions.

From an awestruck Coach Andy Christensen:

On Saturday 9 April, 26 teams participated in the Washington Science Olympiad State Tournament.

• Tesla STEM Green finished in 1^st place and qualified as the Washington State representative to the National Science Olympiad. They narrowly edged (82 pts to 88 pts) the Bothell team that won the Regional Tournament.
• Tesla STEM Magenta finished in 7^th place and was the highest-finishing second team in the State Tournament.

Science Olympiad is played by teams of 15 students who compete in pairs and trios across 23 total events. They are stack-ranked in each event and the team with the lowest sum of rankings in the 23 events wins. Each high school may send a maximum of two qualifying teams to the State Tournament; each state may send only one team to the National Science Olympiad.

Of the 23 events at State, Tesla STEM Green finished 1^st in 10 events, but still were tightly grouped with Bothell and Camas. Our teams won medals for finishing in the Top 5, as follows:

Astronomy:  Evan Kim & Yuchen Li, 1^st (Green), Harish Krishnakumar & Annanya Unnikrishnan, 4^th (Magenta)

Bridge:  Marcin Anforowicz & Abhiram Yakkali, 4^th (Magenta)

Cell Biology:  Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 1^st (Green)

Chemistry Lab:  Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1^st (Green)

Code Analysis:  Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth, 3^rd (Green)

Codebusters:  Phillip Araujo, Aayush Sheth & Olivia Wang, 3^rd (Green)

Detector Building:  Divij Aswinkumar & Tejas Pakalapati, 5^th (Magenta),

Disease Detectives:  Anjali Sreenivas & Maxwell Soh, 1^st (Green)

Dynamic Planet:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1^st (Green)

Environmental Chemistry:  Yuchen Li & Sebi Kumar, 1^st (Green)

Experimental Design:  Siddhant Porwal, Anjali Sreenivas & Aayush Sheth, 2^nd (Green)

Forensics:  Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1^st (Green)

Gravity Vehicle:  Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 5^th (Green)

Green Generation:  Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 2^nd (Green)

Ornithology:  Rohan Iyer & Olivia Wang, 5^th (Green)

Remote Sensing:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1^st (Green)

Rocks & Minerals:  Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1^st (Green)

Trajectory:  Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 3^rd (Green)

WiFi Lab:  Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 1^st (Green)

Write It CAD It:  Phillip Araujo & Katie Chan, 2^nd (Green)

Tesla STEM SciOly has only existed for 3 years. To go from nothing (well COVID) in Year 1, to 3^rd place in Washington State in Year 2, to 1^st place this year, is a testament to the vision, dedication, time and effort of the students who lead this organization. I am proud of them and of the culture they created. Washington State is very competitive and they might not win every year, but I am confident that they will have friendship, kindness, support, samosas, and Can-Am pizza for years to come.

The team gratefully acknowledges the support of Ms. Duenas, Mr. Crowe, Ms. Townsend, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Chan in providing building access, lab and equipment access, and coaching.

Tesla STEM student Keshav Acharya won a Silver Medal as part of the 2022 President's Volunteer Service Awards!  As part of the Alliance of Youth Leaders in the United States (AYLUS), advised by Ms. Brooke Ranieri, Keshav participated in volunteering events around the community, including food drives, clearing invasive plants from trails, and collaborating with the City of Sammamish on their projects, eventually earning nearly a hundred total hours throughout the year. The PVSA was created to award outstanding members of the community who achieve set goals for community service.

Over two weekends in May, Tesla STEM competed in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl. (They qualified by winning the ORCA Bowl at the University of Washington.) After surviving several elimination rounds, the team finished in 4th place nationally (one place higher than last year!).

Please congratulate Yuchen Li, Aashray, Maxwell Soh, and Atharv Dixit.  In particular, please encourage our lone non-senior, Aashray, who had so much fun that he plans to keep the team going next year.

This year, Tesla STEM qualified for the National Science Olympiad for the first time by finishing 1^st at the Washington State Tournament.

In the National Tournament, they were coached by Ms. Rebecca Townsend, with help from Ms. Duenas and Mr. Crowe.

A total of 60 teams competed in the National Tournament and Tesla STEM placed 24^th.  Please congratulate the following ten groups who placed in the top 15 in the nation in their events:

Astronomy:  Evan Kim & Yuchen Li, 12^th

Chemistry Lab:  Sebi Kumar & Yuchen Li, 15^th

Dynamic Planet:  Aashray & Yuchen Li, 1^st

Forensics:  Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 10^th

Remote Sensing:  Aashray & Yuchen Li, 4^th

Rocks and Minerals:  Aashray & Yuchen Li, 1^st

Trajectory:  Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 10^th

Cybersecurity:  Marcin Anforowicz & Aayush Sheth, 8^th

Digital Structures:  Marcin Anforowicz & Divij Aswinkumar 12^th

Write It CAD It:  Prerana Kota & Harish Krishnakumar, 10^th

Sixty-one teams advanced to the National Science Bowl. This year, instead of flying all of them to Washington, DC, the Federal Government hosted an online tournament to determine the final 8 teams that will fly to the Capitol and compete.

On 27 May, the Tesla STEM Science Bowl team--Yuchen Li, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Sebi Kumar, and Sami Badal Khan--survived four elimination rounds to qualify as one of the final 8 teams in the country.

Four members of the team traveled to Washington, DC and competed in July.

They finished in 3rd place! This has been a project that has been years in the making and we are very proud of Yuchen Li, Evan Kim, Sebi Kumar, Sami Badal Khan.

The USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad (USAAAO) test is the first test in a series of tests leading to representing the United States in the International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA).   The test is a 75-minute, 30-question multiple choice test. About 20% of the people who write the exam are selected for the next level, the National Astronomy Competition (NAC). Placing in the top 10 in the NAC will earn you a spot to represent the US in the IOAA.

Several students from Tesla STEM's Astronomy club wrote the USAAAO exam, and two of our juniors, Harish Krishnakumar and Evan Kim, qualified to the NAC which took place virtually on March 26th, 2022.

One of our students, Evan Kim, scored 9^th in the nation on the NAC and will represent the US as part of the guest team at the 15^th IOAA in Kutaisi, Georgia.

The USA Physics Olympiad Series is a series of tests to select the US representatives at the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO). The first in the series is the F=ma, a multiple-choice mechanics exam, and the second is the USA Physics Olympiad (USAPhO), a 3 hour short answer exam testing everything from relativity to thermodynamics. The last stage is the US Physics Team Training camp, where the top-20 scorers on the USAPhO are flown out to the University of Maryland for 10 days of grueling tests, lectures, and labs to determine the final 5. And after making it through the first two rounds of testing, our junior Evan Kim will attend the camp from June 6-17. If he makes it through training camp, he'll represent the US at the 2022 Virtual IPhO!

From Ms. Belle Bonomo:

Last week, we hosted the 3^rd Annual STEM Expo and the first one that was a joint, in-person event for the Startup Track (STEM Startups students) and the Research Track (Kate Allender’s students). There were five judges for the startups (one of whom was Melanie Kong!) and three judges for the research projects, and we successfully livestreamed the entire event! I’ve attached a few pictures from the STEM Expo here, and I have extra programs (designed by recently graduated seniors, Katie Chan and Jasmine Ku) in a box in my mailbox if you want one!

After each startup and research project presented, the judges deliberated extensively and awarded prizes to the following winners. Congratulations to our winners from this year’s STEM Expo:

• Startup Track
  • Kobra (Pranav Teegavarapu) earned Best Startup for their visual programming language that makes machine learning easy to learn.
  • DBall: Defensive Basketball Training (Ryan Chan, Ben Moskalensky, and Cameron Yetzer) earned the Entrepreneurship Award for their mobile app that helps basketball players learn defensive positions.
  • FriendFlix (Triana Fernando, Tanvi Kamat, and Emma Shi) earned Audience Favorite for their online platform and community where friends can share and recommend new TV shows to each other.
• Research Track
  • 1^st Place: Anya Vaish - Bioinformatic Analysis to Find a Universal Sequence from SARS-CoV-2 Genomes for the Potential Development of a Pancoronavirus Vaccine
  • 2^nd Place: Cindy Chen - Facial and Emotional Recognition Among Caucasian and East Asian Adolescents
  • 3^rd Place: Laya Nair - Parkinson's Disease: A Risk Prediction Model Using Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Finals:

Avant-Garde Investments, from Tesla STEM High School, placed 3^rd in the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition. The team consisted of the following members:

William Gong: 10th Grade
Rithika Madey: 9th Grade
Arjun Mahesh: 11th Grade (Eastlake HS)
Aayush Sheth: 11th Grade
Maxwell Soh: 11th Grade
Ananya Soni: 10th Grade
Dhruv Srinivasan: 11th Grade (Redmond HS)

This was the largest competition ever, with 972 entries from 35 countries. The top 10 teams, representing five different countries, submitted investment reports and answered challenging questions from a panel of online judges to determine the winners. For more information, see the press release at https://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu/news/mr-investments-first-place-2021-investment-competition/ (and reproduced below).

Regional Competition Round:

Eight teams from the Tesla STEM Economics Club, which was founded by Aayush Sheth and Maxwell Soh in 2020 and is advised by Mrs. Ryfka Schafer, competed in the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business Global Stock Market Challenge.  https://globalyouth.wharton.upenn.edu/  

Out of 972 teams from around the world, a team from Tesla STEM was one of just 20 US teams to make it into the final round. Those team members from Tesla STEM were Aayush Sheth, Maxwell Soh, and William Gong! Their team was specifically advised and helped through the administrative processes by their teacher Mr. Matthew Travis.

The challenge occurred from September 2020 to January 19, 2021.

***

Press release from the Wharton School of Business:

 

M&R Investments Takes First Place in Our 2021 Global Finale

In what can best be described as a year of uncertainty, the 2020-2021 Wharton Global High School Investment Competition offered high school students worldwide something they could count on: the 9^th straight year of collaborating with teammates and teachers, building creative investment strategies, analyzing industries and companies, trading stocks in real time, and learning a lot about finance.

A total of 972 teams from 35 countries submitted final investment reports for judge evaluation, the most ever for the competition, which this year was sponsored by Citibank N.A. Singapore for Regions 1 and 2 and BTG Pactual for Region 4.

Following the regional competition rounds, it all came down to Friday, May 7, the Global Finale. The 10 top teams representing five countries answered challenging questions online from the judges and attended a virtual ceremony hosted by Wharton Global Youth Program Executive Director Eli Lesser to find out who would take home this year’s top honors.

Congratulations to the winners of our 2020-2021 Wharton Global High School Investment Competition! They are:

 First Place: M&R Investments, Marvin Ridge High School, North Carolina, U.S. (Team Leader: Esha S., Team Advisor: Sree Singaraju)

 Second Place: Wells Street Capital, Walter Payton College Prep High School, Illinois, U.S. (Leader: Leo K., Advisor: Kathryn Person)

 Third Place: Avant-Garde Investments, Tesla STEM High School, Washington, U.S. (Leader: Dhruv S., Advisor: Matthew Travis)

 Honorable Mention: TSRSM Capital, Shri Ram School, Moulsari, India (Leader: Vansh J., Advisor: Vandana Sharma)

Two key themes shaped the virtual Global Finale: gratitude for student teams’ disciplined commitment to the competition and admiration for their financial knowledge and skills.

“Advice from my seat in investing: maintain the discipline of your investment process and be flexible when things don’t work out.”— Virgilio Aquino, Competition Judge

“I was very impressed with many of the suggestions that you guys came up with,” said Florian Hagenbuch, a 2010 Wharton graduate and successful entrepreneur who served as this year’s competition client. Student teams were building investment strategies around Hagenbuch’s financial objectives in hopes of “winning” his business as the best strategists and analysts. “I made sure to review each and every presentation you put together,” he added. “In fact, there are a few recommendations in your portfolios that I will even look forward to implementing in my portfolio.”

This year’s Global Finale judges included: Virgilio Aquino (C’07, WG’12), investment director at Aberdeen Standard Investments; Linda Cox, a retired business education teacher and former investment professional who previously advised two consecutive winning teams in the competition; Muk Rao (C’94, GSE’97), senior technologist at Wharton Research Data Services; and Patrick Yung (WG’00), senior vice president, corporate development and strategic investments for Independence Blue Cross.

The judges took a moment on Friday to say a few words to the top 10 teams.

“When I saw all the different presentations, I was truly amazed,” said Yung. “The maturity level, the thoughtfulness and the amount of time and effort for each of you to do that on top of your studies as a high school student really is impressive.”

Added Aquino: “You are already way ahead of the curve. When I was your age, I did not know what a Monte Carlo simulation was. To see those concepts being applied in presentations just blows my mind. Advice from my seat in investing: maintain the discipline of your investment process and be flexible when things don’t work out.”

Students on this year’s first-place team received full scholarships to the Wharton Global Youth Program Future of the Business World online summer course. All teams are taking home winning plaques and certificates.

Registration for the 2021-2022 Wharton Global High School Investment Competition begins June 1! Visit the website for all the key dates in next year’s competition, as well as to read about exciting change to the rules. Questions? Email wghs-invcomp@wharton.upenn.edu.

Please congratulate our Science Bowl team—Yuchen Li, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Saketh Dhulipalla, and Sami Badal Khan—for their 4^th place finish in the MIT Science Bowl!

This competition was held virtually—it was a long day of Zoom that began at 5:30am local time.  The competition was deliberately difficult and featured 40 of the best teams in the country. The team won 7 matches and lost only 2, both to Lexington HS (in MIT’s backyard), who went on to be defeated narrowly in the finals by the current national champion.

The team conducted itself well, working together to solve problems under extreme time pressure, and sharing the burden of sitting out (since only 4 out of 5 get to play at one time).  The best part, however, was the team introductions before the second round, where the icebreaking question was “Who is your favorite scientist?”  Direct quotes:

“I’m Yuchen Li … and my favorite scientist is Alexander Borodin.

“I’m Rohan Iyer … and my favorite scientist is the 5-year-old across the street.

“I’m Saketh Dhulipalla … and my favorite scientist is Nigel Crowe.

“I’m Sami … and my favorite scientist is Wolfgang Pauli.

“I’m Evan Kim … and my favorite scientist is Peter Saxby.”

When you see these students, please congratulate them and the teachers that inspire them.

Our Science Olympiad team was formed last year and, after a couple of very encouraging results, the Washington regional and state events were canceled due to COVID (as were similar events for so many of our other organizations).  In the wake of that great disappointment, Yuchen Li, Aayush Sheth and the other organizers decided that in 2020-21, Tesla STEM SciOly would go deeper, by competing in more regional- and national-level events, and broader, by accepting anyone who wanted to join (i.e., this is a “no cut” competitive club) and fielding as many teams as we can at each event.

Both efforts are succeeding, so far.  There are 15 members on each team and we have nearly four full teams. The events are all online, but club leaders are working to create a friendly, supportive culture like those we have seen in the other major teams in Washington (Bothell, Camas, Raisbeck).

Since school began, the Tesla STEM Science Olympiad team has participated in four invitational events:

• University of Georgia Science Olympiad (UGASO):  Tesla STEM placed well:  out of 75 teams (including teams from MI, CA, NV, NJ, and NY), Team Green won 2^nd place, Team Magenta earned 31^st place, and Team Blue earned 44^th place.
• Camas SciOly Invitational:  Tesla STEM’s “Model S” team won 1^st place, beating out all of the other major Washington high schools that play SciOly (as well as Ed Clark HS of Las Vegas, who won Camas last year). In addition, the “Cybertruck” team earned 6^th place and the “Model Y” team earned 18^th place, which shows encouraging depth!
• Science Olympiad Las Vegas Invitational (SOLVI):  Tesla STEM Team Green placed 6^th out of 83 teams at SOLVI. This was a national event—the top 5 schools were all from different states (NY, OH, NC, NJ, & CA—with WA in 6^th!). Tesla STEM had several Top 10 finishes, listed below.
• University of Chicago Science Olympiad (UCSO):  Tesla STEM Team Green won 2^nd place in a national field that included Stuyvesant, Thos. Jefferson, and other heavyweights from far east of the mountains.

I have listed the event and individual winners below. If you read that far and see these students, please congratulate them—or congratulate anyone on these teams, because winning a team trophy is more dependent on consistent performance across all events, rather than individual performance. These teams are performing well across all events, with impressive results.

Mr. Christensen

______________

Individual Results:

University of Georgia Science Olympiad (UGASO) (14 November 2020):

Anatomy:  6^th place, Rohan Iyer & Anjali Sreenivas

Astronomy:  1^st place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li

Chem Lab:  5^th place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Yuchen Li

Circuit Lab:  3^rd place, Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth

Codebusters:  8^th place, Aayush Sheth, Phillip Araujo & Sahith Gorty

Designer Genes: 3^rd place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer

Disease Detectives:  3^rd place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas

Dynamic Planet:  2^nd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Fossils:  3^rd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Machines:  6^th place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad

Ornithology:  6^th place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer

Protein Modeling:  3^rd place, Rohan Iyer, Saketh Dhulipalla & Maxwell Soh

Sounds of Music:  4^th place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo

Water Quality:  7^th place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta

 

Camas SciOly Invitational (12 December 2020):

Team Model S:  1^st place; Team Cybertruck:  6^th place; Team Model Y:  18^th place

Anatomy & Physiology:  1^st place, Rohan Iyer & Anjali Sreenivas

Astronomy:  3^rd place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li

Chem Lab:  1^st place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sami Badal Khan

Circuit Lab:  2^nd place, Sami Badal Khan & Aaditya Prasad

Code Analysis:  3^rd place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta

Codebusters:  3^rd place, Aayush Sheth, Phillip Araujo, & Sahith Gorty

Designer Genes:  1^st place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer

Detector Building:  4^th place, Sami Badal Khan & Aayush Sheth

Digital Structures:  6^th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Evan Li; 3^rd place, Neha Madanagopal

Disease Detectives:  1^st place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas

Dynamic Planet:  1^st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Environmental Chemistry:  1^st place, Yuchen Li & Saketh Dhulipalla

Experimental Design:  5^th place, Anjali Sreenivas, Aayush Sheth, & Aaditya Prasad

Forensics:  5^th place, Harish Krishnakumar & Navaneet Girikumar; 2^nd place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sahith Gorty

Fossils:  5^th place, Ethan Liao & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 2^nd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

GeoLogic Mapping:  1^st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Machines:  6^th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 1^st place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad

Ornithology:  4^th place, Nikhil Mehta & Matthew Lam

Sounds of Music:  1^st place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo

Water Quality:  1^st place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta

 

Science Olympiad Las Vegas Invitational (SOLVI) (19 December 2020):

Astronomy:  1^st place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li

Designer Genes:  5^th place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer

Disease Detectives:  5^th place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas

Dynamic Planet:  4^th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Machines:  2^nd place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad

 

University of Chicago Science Olympiad (UCSO) (16 January 2021):

Team Green:  2^nd place 

Astronomy:  3^rd place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li

Codebusters:  8^th place, Aayush Sheth & Phillip Araujo

Designer Genes:  6^th place, Rohan Iyer & Nikhil Mehta

Dynamic Planet:  1^st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Experimental Design:  2^nd place, Aaditya Prasad & Aayush Sheth

Forensics:  7^th place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sahith Gorty

Fossils:  10^th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Geologic Mapping:  6^th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit

Machines:  9^th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 2^nd place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad

Ornithology:  4^th place, Nikhil Mehta & Matthew Lam

Protein Modelling:  8^th place, Rohan Iyer & Saketh Dhulipalla

Sounds of Music:  6^th place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo

 

From Ciaran Danaee, our Biology Club advisor:

May 2021:

USABO Semifinal Results are in:

Please congratulate Rohan Iyer for the HUGE accomplishment of scoring among the top 20 of all students nationwide and qualifying as a finalist!  At finals, Rohan and the other 19 finalists will spend two weeks being trained in laboratory techniques and instructed in biology concepts by university professors and experts with experience in research.  There he will have the opportunity to become part of a finalist team to represent the United States at the International Biology Olympiad, held in Lisbon, Portugal this year, following the 6-hour final exam that will test both his practical skills and conceptual understanding.  

March 2021:

A total of 18 bio club students participated in the USABO Open Exam, the first of two rounds of challenging exams. Following the Semifinal, twenty Finalists are invited to a residential training program where they learn advanced biological concepts and exacting lab skills at the USABO National Finals. Ultimately, four students earn the right to represent the USA at the International Biology Olympiad (IBO), a worldwide competition involving student teams from over seventy countries.

We have two students who qualified as semifinalists for the USABO Open Exam, meaning that they scored in the top 10% of students nationally.  Congratulate (and wish good luck) to:

Maxwell Soh

Rohan Iyer

 

From Kyle Ostlie, our Math Club Advisor:

The American Mathematics Competitions(AMC) is the first of a series of three challenging competitions in high school mathematics that determine the United States team for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). The AMC is one of the largest mathematics competitions in the nation, and we spend most of the year in math club preparing for it. The next round is the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME). Only the top 10% of AMC scores in the nation are invited.

This year we had 18 students from the math club participated in the AMC, 6 students qualify for AIME (top 10%), and 3 students were awarded the Certificate of Distinction which signifies that they were in the top 5% nationally. If you see the following students please congratulate them:

AIME Qualifiers:

Kevin Zhang – Certificate of Distinction (top 5%)

Evan Kim – Certificate of Distinction (top 5%)

Sebastian Kumar – Certificate of Distinction (top 5%)

Julia Liu

Chris Ma

Aayush Sheth

The National Ocean Sciences Bowl is held every year (and has been hosted by UW!). The winners of the regional bowls all meet at the NOSB finals, but first they must regional bowls, each of which is named with a local connection such as the Bay Scallop Bowl, Blue Crab Bowl, Grunion Bowl, Trout Bowl (Colorado), Penguin Bowl, Quahog Bowl, Salmon Bowl, &c., &c. 

Our regional bowl is the Orca Bowl.  This was the first time Tesla STEM has participated. There were seven rounds (4 prelim and 3 elimination), played yesterday and today, and our small, brave band of 11^th graders led from wire to wire, including a comfortable 103-88 victory over Newport HS in the final.

If you see the following students, please congratulate them on this achievement:  
Yuchen Li,
Maxwell Soh,
Nikhil Mehta, and
Atharv Dixit. 
And wish them luck at the national event.

The USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad (USAAAO) test is the first test in a series of tests leading to representing the United States in the International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA).   The test is a 75-minute, 30-question multiple choice test. About 20% of the people who write the exam are selected for the next level, the National Astronomy Competition (NAC). Placing in the top 10 in the NAC will earn you a spot to represent the US in the IOAA.

This was the first year our school participated in this Olympiad. Several students from Tesla STEM's newly-formed Astronomy club wrote the USAAAO exam, and one student, Harish Krishnakumar, qualified to the NAC which will take place virtually on March 20th, 2021.

From Ms. Allender:

Please congratulate our young scholars who participated in the 64th Annual Washington Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) which was held remotely on Friday and Saturday, March 26-27th. We had four students take home ISEF bids and place in the top seven best projects of the whole fair!!  When we include the two students (Yuchen Li and Julia Liu) who received ISEF bids at CSRSEF, this means that a record breaking 6 projects from Tesla STEM will be going to ISEF. Furthermore, of the 12 bids available to our students to go to ISEF, our students at T-STEM secured 50% of those spots!! Wow.

While ISEF bids are incredibly note-worthy, so are ALL research projects that students completed across the board during their junior year while engaging in remote learning. Please congratulate ALL students who competed at WSSEF - everyone worked so hard and deserves to be commended. Additionally, we had a great showing of 1st place award winners (24) and additional special category awards, which are listed below.

Sasha Batoukova,  Computational modeling of human dentate gyrus: applications for epilepsy

• 1^st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division

Akaria Crawford, Correlation between Implicit Bias and Microaggression toward African Americans

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Uma Paul, Determining the prognostic value of the DNA methylation of the GYPC, NME1, and SLIT2 genes in human lung adenocarcinoma

• 1st place in Translational Medical Sciences Category, Senior Division
• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement

Aadi Dalia, Utilizing U-Nets for CT Scan Segmentation and Convolutional Neural Networks to Predict Immunotherapy Response

• 1st place in Computational Biology Category, Senior Division

Navaneet Girikumar and Vanshika Singh, Auditory Classical Conditioning of the Cockroach, Periplaneta americana 

• 1st place in Animal Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement

Aheli Dutta, Extreme Gradient Boosted Classification and Regression Trees to Predict Outcomes in Patients With Monoclonal Gammopathies of Undetermined Significance

• 1st place in Computational Biology category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!
   

Jennifer Hu, Identification of Co-Expressed Genes to BDNF and trk-B as Major Depressive Disorder Related Biomarkers Using Microarray Data

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences, Senior Division
• American Psychological Association special category Award
• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!

Noelle Hall, Assessing Risk Factors: Creating a Risk Metric for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) 

• 1st place in the Translational Medical Sciences Category, Senior Division

Maile Hori,  Effects of Music Lyrics on Heart Rate and Exercise Performance

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Julia Liu, Predicting Cancer Stem Cell Markers With Machine Learning

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division

Laura Mangov and Leonardo Ribeiro de Brito, Training and Applying a Convolutional Neural Network to Identify COVID-19 in Chest CT Scans

• 1st place in Robotics and Intelligent Systems category, Senior Division
• Office of Naval Research special category award

Nidhi Munikote, Diagnosing Breast Cancer Using Deep Learning

• 1st place in Robotics and Intelligence Machines Category, Senior Division

Samuel Rodriguez, A Novel Software-Based Solution to Aid in the Detection and Prevention of Voice Phishing

• 1st place in Systems Software category, Senior Division

Saketh Dhulipalla, Predicting the Extent of Late Seasonal Wildfires in Washington Using the Correlation Between the Standardized Precipitation Index and Burned Area Data 

• One of top 7 projects in entire Fair - Regeneron ISEF Finalist!
• 1st place in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Senior Division 
• Genius award

Nikhil Mehta and Aaditya Prasad, A Novel Implementation of Adversarial Networks Alongside Custom Identifiers Using Weighted Boxes Fusion for Diseased Crop Detection by UAVs

• 1st place in Robotics and Intelligent Machines Category, Senior Division

Aayush Sheth, Using a Multiple Timepoint Siamese Net with Grey Matter and White Matter Hyperintensity Volumes as Differentiating Metrics to Predict Onset of Alzheimer's Disease 

• 1st place in Translational Medical Science category, Senior Division

Jacqueline Simpson, A Correlational Study on Gifted Burnout and Work Ethic 

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Rishabh Venkatesan, Remote controlled electro-mechanical mechanism to reduce risk of accidents when dispensing moss removal powder on roof

• 1st place in Engineering Mechanics category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
• American Industrial Hygiene Award

Ian Yang, The Study of the Effect of Different Areas of Shooting and Shots to Influence Goal Ratios 

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division

Hannah Chen, Separating Microplastics from Sand using Terminal Velocity and Density Differences

• 1st place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division
• Marine Sciences Outstanding Research award
• NOAA Pulse of the Planet Award
• Genius Award

Dan Dumitrescu and Tiana Dumitrescu, Accident Replication Machine for Wearable Devices 

• 1st place in Engineering Mechanics category, Senior Division

Maxwell Soh, Virtually Screening Structurally Similar Compounds to Known Human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors as a Means of Discovering Cancer Therapeutics

• 1st place in Translational Medical Sciences category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

Tayla Belikoff, Instrument Addition to Robotic Arm to Allow Use of Digital Stethoscope for Safe Examination of Infectious Patients

• 1st place in Biomedical Engineering Category, Senior Division

Yuchen Li, Path Dependence of AMOC Weakening: A Geostrophic Shear Approach 

• 1st place in Earth and Environmental Sciences category, Senior Division
• American Meteorological special category award
• Marine Sciences Outstanding Research award
• NASA Earth Systems Science award
• NOAA - Pulse of Planet award
• Office of Naval Research special category award

Thank you all for your continual support and amazing work you do with these students in all classes. It truly is a team effort to help these students accomplish such amazing research.

From Ms. Rebecca Townsend:

This was the first year we competed in this national competition hosted by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health.  The students either wrote individual essays or made group videos about the bioethics concerning emerging brain technologies. The Tesla STEM seniors who placed were:

• Anisha Karnik and Anika Consul – 3^rd place video for “Brain Computer Interfaces” 
• Suhani Arora – Honorable Mention essay for “Should DBS be performed knowing it can cause personality change?”

From Ms. Rebecca Townsend:

For this national competition, the students write an essay predicting how a current technology will evolve in ten years.  For my class, they have to pick a biomedical technology. Tesla STEM seniors who placed were:

• Ankita Menon, Harini Shankar, and Emily Zhao – Honorable Mention for “A Novel Enzyme and Biomarker Detector Therapy for Osteosarcoma”
• Anika Consul and Ananya Nandula – Honorable Mention for “Post-partum Hemorrhage Contraction Package”
• Sameer Aamir and Samarjit Kaushik – Honorable Mention for “”LGN-Targeted Approach to Visual Prosthesis Utilizing Brain Imaging and Eye-Tracking Technology”

From Mr. James Boyd:

One out of every six students at Tesla STEM participated in HOSA this academic year with total student participation adding up to thousands of hours of work.  These 100+ students focused their weekly meetings towards the State Leadership Conference led by Prakriti Shukla and Riya Kulkarni.   

Here are the students who scored in the top ten ranking at the State Leadership Conference (March 13^th-19^th):

Event	Place	Students
Biomedical Debate	1	Samarjit Kaushik
		Parum Misri
		Varun Wescott
		Aran Punniamoorthy
Biomedical Debate	8	Esha Bangur
		Nidhi Munikote
		Hannah Chen
		Uma Paul
Community Awareness	8	Maile Hori
		Noelle Hall
		Jackie  Simpson
Community Awareness	10	Ryan Chan
		Lauren Kaplita
		Cameron Yetzer
		Mohmmad Mendahawi
Forensic Science	10	Jessica Wang
		Tayla Belikoff
Health Career Display	1	Rhea Kuppa
		Karina Kejriwal
Health Career Display	2	Sanjana Desai
		Prisha Agarwal
Health Career Display	3	Tanvi  Sapar
		Angelina Durbin
Health Education	5	Shivani Godse
		Tanvi  Sapar
		Angelina Durbin
HOSA Bowl	4	Rithani Saravanakumar
		Laya Nair
		Vijaya Sripada
		Gauri Raman
Medical Innovation	1	Anisha Karnik
		Suhani  Arora
Medical Innovation	6	Shivani  Sama
		Prisha Agarwal
		Sanjana Desai
Public Service Announcement	1	Laura Mangov
		Garan Tantasirikorn
		Lenardo Ribeiro de Brito
Public Service Announcement	3	Divya Singh
		Bhavya Nandikanti
		Karina Kejriwal
Public Service Announcement	5	Esha Bangur
		Nidhi Munikote
		Hannah Chen
		Noelle Hall
		Maile Hori
Barbara James Service Award	3	Supriya Baskar

 

Rankings 1 -3 have the opportunity to participate in the HOSA Virtual International Leadership Conference starting June 23^rd. The fourth place ranking still has a chance of attending depending on ranking 1-3 participation.  

From Ms. Lori Zebrack-Smith:

Last week was the FBLA State Business Leadership Conference.  Along with the event results below, we had four students run for State Officers  for next year and two of them won, Karina Kejriwal and Cindy Chen.  The top four winners in competitive events automatically qualify to compete in the national conference in June and places 5 – 10 may move up if anyone 1-4 can’t make it.

Accounting: Rajat Sengupta 8^th place

Advertising: Edward Zhou 1^st place

Banking and Financial Systems: Team of Divij Aswinkumar and Farzad Hasan 6^th place

Broadcast Journalism: Team of Monisha Krothapalli and Shreya Pandey 1^st place

Business Communiction: Siddhant Porwal 7^th place

Business Ethics: Team of Laura Anker and Uma Paul, 7^th place; Team of Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar 3^rd place

Business Financial Plan: Prakriti Shukla and Prakshi Shukla 5^th place

Computer Problem Solving: Nidhi Munikote 2^nd place

Digital Video Production: Team of Radhika Sikaria and Rohan Singh 4^th; Team of Vani Daryani, Ateeq Ramlan and Leo Ribeiro di Brito 7^th place

E-business: Leo Ribeiro de Brito 5^th place

Economics: Shivank Dutt 7^th place

Entrepreneurship: Team of Shivank Dutt and Aatish Parson 2^nd place; Team of Ryan Chan, Mohammad Mendahawi and Cameron Yetzer 1^st place

Graphic Design: Mikey Halim 3^rd place; Edward Zhou 2^nd place

Hospitality Management: Navaneet Girikumar 4^th place; Team of Vani Daryani and Ananya Krishnan 6^th place; Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku 5^th place

Impromptu Speaking: Mikey Halim 3^rd place

International Business: Team of Ryan Chan, Mohammad Mendahawi and Cameron Yetzer 1^st place; Team of Uma Paul and Emma Shi 2^nd place

Introduction to Business Communication: Sneha Murali 2^nd place, Ananya Unnikrishnan 1^st place

Introduction to Business Presentation: Team of Aymaan Hussain and Isayiah Lim 9^th place; team of Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti and Divya Singh 4^th place

Introduction to Business Procedures: Sneha Murali 2^nd place

Introduction to FBLA: Isayiah Lim 2^nd place

Introduction to Financial Math: Keshav Acharya 3^rd place; Sneha Murali 4^th place

Introduction to Information Technology: Rohit Karthik 4^th place

Introduction to Public Speaking: Cindy Chen 1^st place, Harini Vijeyanandh 6^th place

Introduction to Social Media Strategy: Team of Ansh Aggarwal, Varsha Mantravadi and Prakshi Shukla 4^th place

Job Interview: Eesha Kunisetty 4^th place; Nitya Kakulamarri 3^rd place

Management Decision Making: Team of Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul 4^th place

Mobile Application Development: Team of Aheli Dutta, Aatish Parson and Barath Saravanan 1^st place

Parliamentary Procedure: Team of Siddhant Porwal, Gauri Raman, Arihant Singh and Pranav Teegavarapu 3^rd place

Personal Finance: Deepesh Singh 4^th place

Publication Design: Team of Siddhant Porwal and Harini Vijeyanandh 10^th place; Team of Karina Kejriwal and Divya Singh 8^th place

Sales Presentation: Team of Karina Kejriwal and Rhea Kuppa 4^th place

Securities and Investments: John Karaca 3^rd place

Social Media Strategies: Team of Aheli Dutta and Barath Saravanan 2^nd place

Supply Chain Management: Mohit Soni 5^th place

Led by Yuchen Li, Tesla STEM High School earned 5th place in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB).

The team earned its place in NOSB by winning the ORCA Bowl, which is the regional ocean sciences bowl for Washington. The NOSB was the national final, which tested knowledge ranging from sciences (biology, geology, and oceanography) to history, geography, and regulation.

The team consisted of Yuchen Li (captain), Maxwell Soh, Nikhil Mehta, and Atharv Dixit.

From Mr. Pete Saxby:

Our junior Evan Kim has made it through 2 rounds of testing to qualify for the US Physics Olympics Team. If he makes it through training camp, he will be traveling to Lithuania this summer to participate in international competition! 

From Ms. Ryfka Schafer:

If you see the following students (our Economics Club founders) in your classes next week, please join me in congratulating them! They won 1^st and 2^nd place in WA State for the National Personal Finance Challenge on Friday. They had to take a 30 minute proctored exam over video. They won cash prizes!

Maxwell Soh 1^st Place

Aayush Sheth 2^nd Place

These same students are also the ones who are working with other students across our district to encourage neighboring high schools to start Economics Clubs.

The Tesla STEM Science Bowl Team competed in the Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl on February 27, 2021.

Team 3, consisting of Colin Xie, Danyuan Wang, Vignesh Srinivasan, Anshu Aggarwal, and Arihant Singh, finished in the Top 12.

Team 2, consisting of Prerana Kota, Cheguvijay Aashray, Nakul Rajpal, Srisaitejas Pakalapati, and Sidharth Ganesh, finished in the Top 8.

Team 1, consisting of Yuchen Li, Evan Kim, Saketh Dhulipalla, Rohan Iyer, and Sami Badal Khan, finished 2nd.

Congratulations to each of these teams!

 

39 teams competed in the Washington Science Olympiad Northwest Regional Tournament.

Tesla STEM High School entered three teams:

• Tesla STEM Green finished in 2nd place;
• Tesla STEM Magenta finished in 5th place; and
• Tesla STEM Blue finished in 25th place.

Tesla STEM Green and Tesla STEM Magenta both qualified for the State Tournament.

32 teams competed in the State Tournament of the Science Olympiad.

Tesla STEM High School entered two teams.

Tesla STEM Green finished in 3rd place.

Tesla STEM Magenta finished in 9th place.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to the following students:

Bhavya Nandikanti, Karina Kejriwal, and Divya Singh:  1st Place, Intro to Business Presentation

Rohit Karthik:  3rd Place, Introduction to Information Technology

 

Our Tesla STEM scholars showed their resilience by participating in the TSA State Conference, held remotely on March 19 and 20^th.  They have been working hard on their projects since the Fall and it’s great that they were still able to show off their hard work.  They recorded presentations, took tests online, mailed projects, Skyped interviews, submitted portfolios into drop boxes.  I am proud of their flexibility in these times.

Congratulations to all of the winners listed below, and to our new State Officer At-Large, Brayden Brackett!

3D Animation:

1st Place – Samarjit Kaushik, Arjan Singh,  Brayden Brackett, Varun Wescott

Biotechnology Design:

1st Place – Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy, Arjan Singh, Oleg Ianchenko, Parum Misri, Sahil Kancherla

Coding:

4th Place (tie) – Samarjit Kaushik, Archit Patankar

CAD Architecture:

4th Place - Vivek Gopalam

Engineering Design:

5th Place – Roshni Srikanth, Vidhi Jain, Tarini Srikanth, Lahari Nidadavolu, Aditi Joshi

4th Place – Oleg Ianchenko, Pinakin Kanade, Aran Punniamoorthy, Arjan Singh, Shrey Srivastava

3rd Place – Edward Zhou, Druhin Bhowal, Pranav Teegavarapu, Harish Krishnakumar

Essays on Technology:

5th Place – Alex Leu

Forensic Science:

3rd Place – Rohit Gupta, Tejas Sudhakar

1st Place – Viraj Goyal, Deepayan Sanyal

On-Demand Video:

1st Place – Adi Gottumukkala, Parum Misri, Brayden Brackett, Varun Wescott

Promotional Design:

3rd Place – Akshay Murthy

SciVis:

3rd Place – Harish Krishnakumar, Pranav Teegavarapu, Druhin Bhowal, Edward Zhou

Software Development:

4th Place – Deepayan Sanyal, Samarjit Kaushik, Sahil Kancherla, Brayden Brackett, Archit Patankar

Structural Engineering:

1st Place – Lahari Nidadavolu, Jakob Bjorner

Transportation Modeling:

1st Place – Brayden Brackett

Video Game Design:

2nd Place – Harish Krishnakumar, Pranav Teegavarapu, Druhin Bhowal, Edward Zhou

Congratulations to Maxwell Soh, Matthew Lam, Aadi Dalia, and Muhammad Masood, as they competed in the National History Bee and Bowl Competition that strives to promote history education throughout the United States and around the world.  The Tesla team won the JV Division by winning the History Bowl titles, and Maxwell also had a victory in the JV History Bee.

Personal Finance: 1^st Place - Edward Zhou

Political Science: 1^st Place - Deepayan Sanyal;

2^nd Place -  Alex Leu,

Securities and Investments: 1^st place Pinakin Kanade;

2^nd Place - Deepayan Sanyal

Public Speaking: 5^th Place - Nathan Apfel

Hospitality Management: 2^nd Place - Team of Atharv Dixit and Navaneet Girikumar

3^rd Place - Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku

Electronic Career Portfolio: 5^th Place - Tejas Sudhakar

Emerging Business Issues: 2^nd Place -  Team Claire Yang, Shrey Srivastava and An Doan;

4^th Place - Uma Paul

Management Information Systems: 1^st Place - Maxwell Wang and Brian Yao;

3^rd Place - Vidyut Baskar, Rohit Gupta and Nihal Thomas;  

4^th Place - Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku

Sales Presentation: 5^th Place - Emma Shi

Marketing: 5^th Place - Alex Leu;

6^th Place - Deveshi Thaku;

Client Service: 1^st Place - Claire Yang;

2^nd Place - Mihika Vankamamidi

4^th Place - Spring Chenjp; 

5^th Place - Ajay Rajasekaran

Public Service Announcement: 3^rd Place - Syed Aamir, Vinayak Ajmera and Azhan Zaheer;

5^th Place - Varun Wescott and Parum Misri;  

6^th Place - Isaac Yun, Emily Zhao and Hanara Nam 

Introduction to Public Speaking: 1^st Place -  Cindy Chen;

5^th Place - Ananya Krishnan

E-Business: 2^nd Place - Nihal Thomas, Saanav Somani and Mikey Halim

Management Decision Making: 1^st Place - Siddharth Shende;

2^nd Place - Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul; 5^th Place - Archit Patankar 

Job Interview: 1^st Place - Prakriti Shukla;

6^th Place - Anya Vaish 

Entrepreneurship: 1^st Place - Siddharth Shende;

5^th Place - Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy;

6^th Place - Jessica Singh

Publication Design: 5^th Place - Team of Deveshi Thakur, Emily Zhao and Neerja Natu

Digital Video Production: 1^st Place - Prakriti Shukla and Charlotte Conze;

2^nd Place - Parum Misri, Varun Wescott and Aditya Gottumukkala;

5^th Place - Jasarjan Singh and Kion Bidari

Introduction to Business Presentation: 4^th Place - Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar;

5^th Place - Ann Baturytski and Cici Ao

Global Business: 2^nd Place - Maxwell Wang

 

Website Design: 3^rd Place - Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy and Shrey Srivastava;

5^th Place - Sophia Ling and Kinner Parikh

Social Media Campaign: 2^nd Place - Aditya Gottumukkala, Samarjit Kaushik and Saanav Somani;

6^th Place - Anisha Karnik, Alexa Wirth and Prakriti Shukla

Impromptu Speaking: 1^st Place - Siddharth Shende;

2^nd Place - Maxwell Wang;

5^th Place - Spring Chenjp 

Graphic Design: 3^rd Place - Mikey Halim and Akshay Murthy;

5^th Place - Karina Kejriwal, Divya Singh and Ameya Madhugiri

Word Processing: 3^rd Place - Supriya Baskar

Advertising: 3^rd Place - Akshay Murthy;

5^th Place - Monisha Krothapalli 

Business Calculations: 5^th Place - Hrudai Thungathurthi

Business Communication: 2^nd Place - Abhinav Diddee

Business Law: 1^st Place - Deepayan Sanyal;

2^nd Place - Tejas Sudhakar;

6^th Place - Nihal Thomas 

Computer Problem Solving: 2^nd Place - Michael Yu;

4^th Place - Kinner Parikh;

5^th Place - Anagha Polapragada

Cyber Security: 1^st Place - Michael Yu;

4^th Place - Mihika Vankamamidi;

6^th Place - Anagha Polapragada 

Economics: 2^nd Place - Deepayan Sanyal;

3^rd Place - Uma Paul;

6^th Place - Boaz Wu 

Healthcare Administration: 2^nd Place - Rohit Gupta

Introduction to Business: 1^st Place - Edward Zhou;

3^rd Place - Monisha Krothapalli 

Introduction to Business Communication: 6^th Place - Osheen Tikku

Introduction to FBLA: 5^th Place - Esha Bangur

Introduction to Financial Math: 3^rd Place - Siddhant Porwal;

6^th Place - Arihant Singh

Introduction to Information Technology: 1^st Place - Michael Yu;

2^nd Place - Edward Zhou

Journalism: 3^rd Place - Nathan Apfel

Organizational Leadership: 3^rd Place – Vani Daryani;

4^th Place - Anagha Polapragada;

6^th Place - Supriya Baskar

Parliamentary Procedure: 1^st Place - Team of Oleg Ianchenko, An Doan, Nathan Apfel, Spring Chenjp;

2^nd Place -  Team of Deveshi Thakur, Emily Zhao, Jessica Singh, Keerthana Pilla

For the first time ever, the Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair (CSRSEF) was canceled, the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) has been canceled, and the Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) was held remotely via GoToMeeting. We had 75 students from Tesla STEM participate and once again, our students out-shined our greatest expectations. We had a record number of FOUR students receive bids to ISEF even in-light of the covid-19 outbreak. And ALL STUDENTS that participated deserve a tremendous amount of applause for persevering through this difficult time. They had to navigate trying to finish their project and create their trifold plus prepare for virtual judging and judge questioning all in a matter of weeks. There were a total of 283 students that participated in the tele-judging (with only 4 no shows!) and our T-STEM students comprised of 27% of the total participants 🙂

The following students received ISEF bids (which would have been held in Anaheim, CA this year) - they will receive swag bags and the honor of being an ISEF finalist that they can put in their college applications, which holds significant weight with colleges. 

Ankita Menon- who was the bronze medal winner at WSSEF and also one of the grand prize winners at CSRSEF: Survival Analysis of Pediatric Neuroblastoma Patients Using Gene Expression Data: Identification of Survival Related Biomarkers

An Doan: Autonomous Drones for Search and Rescue Operations

Samarjit Kaushik: Investigating the Effect of Fibulin-2 on NF-kB Pathway Activity and Proliferation of Pediatric Gliomas

Taylor Rice: 3D Printing an Intrauterine Device Specifically for Nulliparous Women by Adjusting Size and Exterior Design

Additionally, of the 75 T-STEM students that competed at WSSEF, we had 27 1st place winners!! Listed at the end of this email are the 1st place winners  - and the following link can be used to see all 1st place winners: https://wssef.org/2020-wssef-first-place-trophy/. 

If a student has a double asterisk next to their name, they advanced to the second round of judging and almost made it to the final round of judging as contenders for being an ISEF finalist. They should be commended for exceptionally stellar projects as well.

And of course, no judging experience is flawless, and there were some exceptional student projects which did not receive their due accolades, in my opinion. Students overall have been very gracious and understanding about the tele-judging experience and the majority have reported a positive experience. 

All the best, 
Kate Allender and Rebecca Townsend

* - * - *

Shri Bhat: Ergonomically designed backpack that reduces postural strain compared to other commercial backpacks

Anika Consul: Using Machine Learning to Create A Universal Chronic Social Defeat Stress Classifier

Soli Dagne: Testing The effects of alcohol on The Effectiveness Of Hericium erinaceous As An Anti-dementia Substance Using Drosophila melanogaster As A Model For Alzheimer’s

An Doan: Autonomous Drones for Search and Rescue Operations

**Ananya Ganapathi: The Correlation Between The Phase of Water And The Presence of Organic Compounds on Near-Earth Objects

Daniel Han: Exploring the Use of Graphene to Strengthen Resins for Flywheel Energy Storage System Rotors

Sahil Kancherla: Investigating Biofuel Growth Inhibition and Product Toxicity with Short-Chain Alcohols in Synechococcus Elongatus

Samarjit Kaushik: Investigating the effect of Fibulin-2 on NF-κB pathway activity and proliferation of pediatric gliomas

Pinakin Kanade: A Machine Learning Approach to Detecting and Predicting the Location of Induced Seismicity from Seismic Waveforms

Fritzi Kornstaedt: Testing woodruff and neem oil as nontoxic (to humans) botanical alternatives to pest control for taxidermy

**Rohith Leedlaharan: A Novel Approach to Quorum Sensing Inhibition using aiiA-Transformed Bacteria in Mixed Culture

Henry Liao: Implementation of Deep Learning Through Haptic Feedback in the Driver’s Seat to Reduce Driver Recognition Error

Daksha Magesh and Daniel Yan: Examining Correlation Between the Genre of Music Present & Increased Academic Performance Through Beta Wave Measurement

Ankita Menon: Survival Analysis of Pediatric Neuroblastoma Patients Using Gene Expression Data: Identification of Surival Related Biomarkers

**Ananya Nandula: Extracting Nickel and Cobalt from Lithium Ion Battery Cathodes

Aran Punniamoorthy: Developing a malaria detection system through microscopy image classification by utilizing complex machine learning techniques

Taylor Rice: 3D printing an Intrauterine Device Specifically for Nulliparous Women, by Adjusting Size and Exterior Design

**Austin Robichaux: Combining Microcontroller-Based Solar Tracking with an Improved Floating Photovoltaic Platform

**Harini Shankar: Engineering a K-12 strain of Escherichia coli to secrete a Polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase

Aayush Sheth: Using a Two-Layer Siamese Net to Recognize Spatial Patterns of Brain Abnormalities and Model the Onset of Alzheimer’s Disease

**Jasarjan Singh: Simultaneous, Noninvasive, and Transdermal Extraction of Urea and Homocysteine, by Reverse Iontophoresis

Jessica Singh: Early Holistic Prediction of Alzheimer’s Disease Using Machine Learning Algorithms

**Shrey Srivastava: Classifying Galaxies Based on Photometric Spectral Bands via Support Vector Machines

Thomas Stahura: Using Artificial Intelligence to Optimize Plant Growth In a Climate Controlled Chamber

Tejas Sudhakar: Using CFD Simulation to Optimize the Airfoil of a Mechanical-Morphing Wing

Madeline Welborne: The Effects of Font and Color Scheme on Perceived Credibility of Websites

The Future Business Leaders of America state leadership conference was held remotely.  Our scholars adapted so well to the change in the way the conference ran this year. 

Here are the top-10 winners from the Test-Only events:

Advertising: 10^th Supriya Baskar, 9^th Alex Liu, 4^th Monisha Krothapalli, 3^rd Akshay Murthy

Business Law: 4^th Nihal Thomas, 2^nd Tejas Sudhakar, 1^st Deepayan Sanyal

Economics: 1^st Deepayan Sanyal

Healthcare Administration: 2^nd Spring Chenjp

Intro to Business: 6^th Eddie Zhou,

Intro to Business Communication: 9^th Anya Vaish

Intro to Financial Math: 3^rd Arihant Singh

Intro to Information Technology: 10^th Harish Krishnakumar, 9^th Eddie Zhou, 3^rd  Siddhant Porwal

Journalism: 10^th Nathan Apfel

Organizational Leadership: 8^th  Aran Punniamoorthy

Personal Finance: 10^th Shrey Srivastava; 8^th Eddie Zhou, 1^st Deepayan Sanyal

Securities and Investments: 3^rd Pinakin Kanade, 2^nd Deepayan Sanyal

Tesla STEM sent three teams to the Department of Energy’s Regional Science Bowl Championships in sunny Pasco, WA.  All three did very well:

Team 3 (Aakash Banerji, Sidharth Ganesh, Prerana Kota, and Vignesh Srinivasan) came in tied for 14^th place and won the closest match in the tournament through tenacious advocacy.

Team 2 (Sami Badal Khan, Nakul Rajpal, Ananya Soni, and Danyuan Wang) came in tied for 9^th place.

Team 1 (Saketh Dhulipalla, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Yuchen Li, and Vedantha Venkatapathy) came in 1^st place, showing particularly steely nerves in their final matches against Redmond and Interlake.  By winning the Regional, Team 1 qualified for the National Science Bowl finals in Washington, DC, at the end of April.

In addition, Sami Badal Khan won an “All-Star” designation by answering the third-most toss-up questions across all of the six preliminary (round-robin) matches.

Congratulations to all of these students.

Andy Christensen

Rohan Iyer and Maxwell Soh are USA Biology Olympiad Semifinalists! They will have one more test to potentially qualify for the Final, which involves 10 days of instruction and 2 days of testing at a host university and a chance to represent the US at the International Biology Olympiad in Japan. 

We also had more students participate in the test this year than ever before, including Nikhil Mehta, Ethan Liao, Jolie Chan, Emma Shi, David Soto, George Zhang, Barath Saravanan, Jerry Chen, Navaneet Girikumar, Natalie Qiu, Boaz Wu, Atharv Dixit, and Jhet Cooperrider Young.

National History Day was held remotely on Saturday May 2. Each year, the National History Day sets a theme and students do research on a topic of their choosing related to the theme, then choose one of five methods of presenting their findings. This year's theme was "Breaking Barriers in History".

Claire Cho wrote a research paper titled World War I: Breaking and Remaking Barriers to War and finished 5th in the State competition.

Here are the top-10 finishers. The top 5 in each event automatically qualify for the National conference in June, this year in Salt Lake City, oops, in their own homes.

Digital Video Production:
6^th place Charlotte Conze, Ria Rajan and Prakriti Shukla

Client Service:
9^th place Claire Yang,
7^th place Mihika Vankamamidi,
1^st place Spring Chenjp

Business Plan:
4^th place Rohit Gupta, Eric Song, Nihal Thomas

Business Financial Plan:
2^nd place Mikey Halim and Varun Wescott

Website Design:
4^th place Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy, Shrey Srivastava

Social Media Campaign:
8^th place Aheli Dutta and Aran Punniamoorthy,
6^th place Anisha Karnik, Prakriti Shukla and Alexa Wirth,
3^rd place Adi Gottumukkala, Samarjit Kaushik and Saanav Somani

Public Service Announcement:
10^th Tobia Kim, Hanara Nam and Isaac Yun,
5^th place Syed Aamir, Vinayak Ajmera, and Azhan Zaheer,
4^th place Charlotte Conze, Ria Rajan

Introduction to Business Presentation:
6^th place Cici Ao, Ann Baturytsi, Aheli Dutta,
3^rd place Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar

Graphic Design:
7^th place Karina Kejriwal, Ameya Madhugiri and Arihant Singh,
2^nd place Mikey Halim and Akshay Murthy

Emerging Business Issues:
6^th place An Doan, Shrey Srivastava and Claire Yang,
5^th place Uma Paul

Electronic Career Portfolio: 8^th place Harish Krishnakumar

Computer Applications and Simulation Programming: 8^th place Abhinav Diddee, Viraj Goyal and Deepayan Sanyal

E-Business 1^st place Mikey Halim, Sanaav Somani, and Nihal Thomas

Entrepreneurship: 3^rd place Oleg Ianchenko, Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy

Global Business: 2^nd place Maxwell Wang

Hospitality Mgt. 4^th place Eesha Kunisetty and Emma Shi

Management Decision Making:
8^th place Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul,
6^th place Archit Patankar,
4^th place Oleg Ianchenko, Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy

Management Information Systems:
4^th place Uma Paul and Emma Shi,
1^st place Maxwell Wang and Brian Yao

Marketing: 2^nd place Alex Liu

Mobile App Development:
8^th place Sahil Kancherla and Samarjit Kaushik,
4^th place Henry Liao and George Zhang

Parli Pro:
10^th place Eesha Kunisetty, Keerthana Pilla, Divya Singh and Emily Zhao,
1^st place Nathan Apfel, Spring Chenjp, An Doan and Oleg Ianchenko

Brayden Brackett won first place in the Washington State Map Story Contest and will move on to the National Competition. 

Josh Poznanski and Katherine Leavitt placed in the top 5 in the state. 

You can see their winning projects by clicking the links below.

Brayden Brackett:  The Demise of a Regional Icon: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f5e9829466a34cb793fb7be7abe49ed2

Katherine Leavitt and Joshua Poznanski: Zoonotic Diseases: HIV
https://teslahs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=d408e68a6b7f4987bdd3186adf1ec0f1

Congratulations to Sophia Xu Ling, who won the Congressional Art Competition for Washington's first congressional district. She won with her watercolor piece titled, "The Suffering of the Great".

“There are so many creative, talented young people in our region which always makes the art competition an exciting experience,” said DelBene. “This year’s winning entry shows the artist’s great skill with watercolors as a medium. As our nation continues to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the subject matter in this piece is incredibly timely. I applaud Sophia and all of our applicants for their wonderful artwork.”

Sophia will have her piece shown in the Capitol Building for one year, along with the winners from across the country. Once details are worked out, she and a parent will be flown to Washington, DC, to attend a winner's reception.

The Congressional Art Competition began in 1982 as an opportunity for members of Congress to recognize and celebrate the artistic talents of their young constituents. Since then, over 650,000 high school students have participated nationwide. The local competition was open to all high school students who either reside or attend high school in the first congressional district. The winner is chosen by a panel of members from the local art community.

 

Please join us in congratulating our ten outstanding young women who received 2020 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing: 

• Aditi Joshi, Affiliate Rising Star
• Amrutha Srikanth, Affiliate Winner
• An Doan, Affiliate Winner
• Ananya Ganapathi, Affiliate Rising Star
• Rachel Alwan, Affiliate Winner
• Sowmya Pratipati, Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Roshni  Srikanth, Affiliate Winner
• Tarini Srikanth, Affiliate Winner
• Dilini Nissanka, Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Anya Vaish, Affiliate Winner
• Annabelle Martin, Affiliate Winner

The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing builds a talent pool for the growing technical workforce and helps academic and corporate organizations celebrate diversity in computing by honoring young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Award recipients are selected based on their aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing; leadership ability; academic history; and plans for post-secondary education.

In June, the Tesla STEM Science Bowl team (Saketh Dhulipalla, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Yuchen Li, and Vedantha Venkatapathy) participated in a completely-online National Science Bowl finals. Of the 60 high school teams in the nation that made the finals, they scored second-highest in the prelims, then went on to finish in the Top 24 in the elimination rounds.

Thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy for going the extra mile to make the National Science Bowl happen, and congratulations to the team!

On 16 July 2020, the results for the FBLA National Leadership Experience were published. With almost 10,000 competitors across the country, Tesla STEM represented once again! 

• Business Law: Deepayan Sanyal 10th place
• Graphic Design: Akshay Murthy and Mikey Halim 1st place
• Public Service Announcement: Charlotte Conze and Ria Rajan 1st place
• E-Business: Saanav Somani, Sahil Kancherla and Nihal Thomas 10th place
• Mobile App Development: George Zhang and Henry Liao 2nd place
• Management Information System: Archit Pantankar, Brian Yao and Raymond Guo 5th place
• Parliamentary Procedure: An Doan, Nathan Apfel, Claire Yang and Deveshi Thakur 10th place

Please congratulate these students next time you see them.

Congratulations to Ms. Sheffels's AP Language students who entered and won prizes in the Holocaust Center for Humanity contest!

This year, there was a creative category and an argumentative writing category.  Please join me in congratulating the winners!

Writing:
Shri Bhat – 1^st place
George Zhang – 2^nd place
Josh Venable – 3^rd place (tied)
Honorable Mention – Spring Chenjp

Film:
Parum Misri – 2^nd place
Eli Trepte – 3^rd place

Art:
Zahra Merchant – 2^nd place
Taylor Rice - Honorable Mention

You can view their work here:   https://holocaustcenterseattle.org/programs-events/writing-art-film-contest

The writing prompt was a letter to Gov. Inslee to advocate for mandatory Holocaust education in Washington state.  ALL of my students wrote compelling, well articulated letters that blew me away.  It’s no surprise to me that we swept the category.

Jenai Sheffels
Current World Problems
Civics
Room 217
Tesla STEM High School

Five submissions from Tesla students took the top five prices at the ESRI ArcGIS Online Washington State Competition. Daniel Rashevsky took the top prize with his Map Story on Homelessness and his project was submitted to the national competition. The projects, students, and link to their projects are below. Each group will receive a $100 gift card from Amazon.   

The Tacoma Smelter	Francessca Rossi		https://tinyurl.com/y6ae2nga
The State of Seattle's Homeless Population	Daniel Rashevsky		https://tinyurl.com/y6ksj8gg
Salmon: The Indicators of the Environment	William Erignac	Theo Devant	https://tinyurl.com/yyq5kyo4
Pacific County Shellfish	Rishika Veeramachaneni	Minu Padhye	https://tinyurl.com/y2up4xvl
Yakama Tribe	Tichada Tantasirikorn	Qing Hui Xie	https://tinyurl.com/y53yhhgm

On June 3, 2019, Mr. Christensen and I escorted our APCS A students to Microsoft to compete in the Hunt the Wumpus competition. Students worked in teams of 5 or 6 to create their own version of Hunt the Wumpus (one of the earliest computer games). Working off the same specifications, each team came up with something unique and creative. We are exceptionally proud of the work they all did.

This competition is an important part of our curriculum because it gives them a taste of the reality of working as a team to design, develop and test a big coding project. It gives them a chance to apply the coding skills they spent all year developing while also learning teamwork, communication, and industry development practices.

 Please join us in congratulating the following students who were recognized at the event.

• Student Choice Award (“Sytax Errors”): Noah Charleson-Sterritt, Michael Halim, Pinakin Kanade, Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy
• 2^nd Runner Up (“How to Train Your Viddy”):  Kishan Balaga, Viddy Baskar, Gabe Ervin, Yukito Shida, Jack Tribolet, Shaurya Vashisth

• 3^rd Runner Up (“Artesian Code”): Sihajveer Gulati, Hans Koduri, Daniel Popa, Raj Sunku, Joshua Venable, Brian Yang
• 2^nd Place, Innovation (“Oh, No!”):  Kion Bidari, Brayden Brackett, Kinner Parikh, Archit Patankar, Varun Wescott, Azhan Zaheer
• 1^st Place, Implementation (“Faze Clans”): Viraj Goyal, Raymond Guo, Sahil Kancherla, Nadav Levanoni, Lucian Petriuc, Niranjan Sahi

This year, as a mini-project for our study of the Holocaust, my juniors submitted art or film to the Holocaust Center for Humanity’s contest.  Please join me in congratulating students on the following awards:

 Film—2^nd place:  Amrutha Srikanth

              3^rd place: Annie Denton

              Honorable mention: Max Reisman

 Art—1^st place: Tichada Tantasirikorn

              2^nd place: Lina Chau

              3^rd place: Elisabeth Berger

              Honorable Mention: Esther Wang

 Writing—1^st place:  Aditi Joshi

 You can view their art and videos here: https://holocaustcenterseattle.org/programs-events/writing-art-film-contest 

Jenai Sheffels

Honors English 10

AP Language & Composition

On Saturday May 4, three Tesla STEM students participated in the Washington State National History Day contest in an attempt to qualify for the National competition in June. More than 600 students participated, having earned that opportunity by qualifying in 8 regional contests around the state.  The top two entries in each of 5 categories at the State contest go on to the National competition.

 Amrutha Srikanth finished 1st in the Senior Individual Documentary category, with her piece titled, Behind the Screen: The Rise of Women Animators in Walt Disney's Studios.

 Anusha Srivastava and Esther Wang finished 2nd in the Senior Group Documentary category, with their piece titled, Unfulfilled Promise: Emerging Conflicts Between Zionists and Arab Nationalists Shaped by British Policy in Post WWI Palestine.

 All three have thus earned the right to participate in the National competition at the University of Maryland in early June.

Our Science Bowl team took 3^rd place at the 2019 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl.  The team was comprised of

              Vedantha Venkatapathy (11^th)

              Yuchen Li (9^th)

              Saketh Dhulipalla (9^th)

              Samarjit Kaushik (10^th)

              Maxwell Soh (9^th)

 In addition to the team award, Yuchen Li won a medal for answering the 3^rd-most toss-up questions.

 The future is bright, though I am encouraging them to stock three full teams for next year…

 Mr. Christensen

Tesla STEM students represented magnificently at the FBLA State Business Leadership Conference this week.  Whether they placed or not, they carried themselves respectively.  The top four automatically qualify for the National conference, places 5 – 10 could potentially move up if the people who placed ahead of them don’t go.

So here it goes:

Business Communication – Hamsa Shankar 3^rd place

Business Law – Siddharth Shende 2^nd place

Computer Problem Solving – Pinakin Kanade 10^th, Varun Sridhar 6^th

Cybersecurity – Varun Sridhar 1^st

Introduction to Financial Math – Jennifer Hu 4^th

Journalism – Ritika Iyer 1^st

Organizational Leadership – George Zhang 2^nd

Securities and Investments – Deepayan Sanyal

Broadcast Journalism – team of Anika Ghelani and Isha Murali 7^th

Business Ethics team of Pinakin Kanade, Saanav Somani, Claire Yang 2^nd

Business Financial Plan – team of Sophia Ling, Aran Punnamoorthy, Nihal Thomas 9^th; team of Oleg Ianchenko, Shrey Shrivastava and Varun Wescott 6^th

Business Plan – team of Surya Gorantla, Graham Sabin and Amar Sood 4^th

Coding and Programming – Henry Liao 2^nd, Rishika Veeramachaneni, 1^st

Computer Game and Simulation Programming – team of Shrey Shrivastava, Deepayan Sanyal, Varun Wescott 4^th

Digital Video Production – team of Anika Ghelani, Iman Khatri, QingHui Xie 10^th, team of Adi Gottamukkala, Nihal Thomas, Mikey Halim 7^th

E-Business – team of Akshay Murthy, Siddharth Shende, Maxwell Wang 1^st

Entrepreneurship – Siddharth Shende 2^nd

Impromptu Speaking – Siddharth Shende 2^nd; Zofia Kierner 5^th

Introduction to Business Presentation – team of An Doan, Claire Yang, Mihika Vankamamidi 6^th

Introduction to Public Speaking – Mikey Halim 5^th

Job Interview – Ritika Iyer 1^st, Zofia Kierner 3^rd

Management Decision Making – team of Eesha Kunisetty and Jennifer Hu 5^th; Samarjit Kaushik 2^nd

Management Information Systems – team of Graham Sabin and Maxwell Wang 1^st

Public Service Announcement – team of Sahil Kancherla, Parum Misri and Varun Wescott 1^st

Publication Design – team of Akshay Murthy and Ritika Iyer 1^st, team of Neerja Natu, Emily Zhao and Deveshi Thakur 9^th

Sales Presentation – Zofia Kierner 4^th

Word Processing – QingHui Xie 7^th

 

Please congratulate our young scholars who participated in the 62nd Annual Washington Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) at Bremerton High school last weekend. We had two students take home ISEF bids and place in the top six best projects of the whole fair and they will be going to Phoenix for the International Science and Engineering Fair in May. This means that 3 projects from Tesla STEM will be going to ISEF. Of the 9 spots available to our students to go to ISEF, our students at T-STEM secured 1/3 of those!! Additionally, for the first time ever, Tesla STEM had a record 8 of the 16 projects (50%) pulled for further judging in consideration for being an ISEF Finalist at WSSEF!! Please congratulate ALL students who competed at WSSEF - everyone worked so hard and deserves to be commended. Congratulations to every single student who competed and also received ribbons or certificates (totaling 79 scholarships and awards!!!) at WSSEF on March 30th.

 

Aditi Ekbote and Vidhi Jain  Drug Combinations with Antibiotics and Curcumin to Combat Antibiotic Drug Resistance

• 1^st place in Microbiology Category, Senior Division

 Nina Gupta, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Home Pregnancy Test to Detect Early Stages of Ovarian Cancer in Postmenopausal Women

 1st place in Biomedical and Health Sciences Category, Senior Division

• Pacific Science Center Certificate of Achievement special category award
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

Nitisha Gautam and Diya Basu A Novel Machine Learning and Western Blotting Approach to Understand the Genomic Differences Between E-cigarette Vapor and Cigarette Smoke and its Relation to Tumor Development

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division

 Akshay Murthy,  Greet Sense: A Facial Recognition and Obstacle Detection Device for the Visually- Impaired and Blind

• 2nd place place in Embedded Systems Category, Senior Division
• Do Real Things Award of Excellence in Science and Engineering
• IEEE - Seattle electro-technology special category award, $125
• SPIE - International Society for Optics and Photonics special category award, $150

 Anusha Srivastava, Assessing the Apoptotic Effect of the Bacteriocin Nisin on Metastatic Breast Cancer Cell Viability

• 2nd place place in Cellular and Molecular Biology Category, Senior Division

 Sebastian Wick and Varshan Muhunuthan, Car Exhaust Carbon Capture and Filtration by Implementing Synechococcus 7942 in a Photobioreactor

  1st place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division

• National Oceanic $ Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) special category award, $75

 Callie Wharton and Mychal Miller, The Effect of Age on the Presence of Implicit Bias

 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences, Senior Division

• American Psychological Association special category Award

 Tarini Srikanth, Modeling Potential Drug to Drug Interactions Targeted Towards Cardiovascular Systems

• 1st place in the Computational Biology Category, Senior Division

 Tristan Stevens and Maxwell Wang,   Development of a Bi-Layer Geosynthetic to Decrease Road Deflection 

• 1st place in Engineering Mechanics Category, Senior Division
• Washington State University - Voliland College of Engineering and Architecture $8000 scholarship for each student
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

 Rachel Oomen, The Efficacy of Mindfulness Regimen On the Inattentive Behavioral Symptoms Among Emerging Adults

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

 Parbeen Sekhon and Rhea Shinde, Improving Accuracy Rate of Bitemark Analysis in Forensic Odontology

• 1st place in Biomedical and Health Science category, Senior Division
• US Army - Biomedical Sciences special category award
• U.S Airforce special category award

 Marton Teichner, Investigating the Effects of Education on the Impact of Astroturfing

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division
• American Psychological Association special category Award

 Sowmaya Pratipati, Creating a More Cost-Effective Hydroponics System to Compete with Conventional Agriculture

 2nd place in Plant Sciences category, Senior Division

 Anirudh Iyer, Analyzing miRNA Expression Levels in Glioblastoma Patients to Identify Candidate BioMarkers

• One of top 6 projects in entire Fair - won an all expense paid trip to Phoenix, ISEF Finalist
• 1st place in Biomedical and Health Sciences, Senior Division 
• Evergreen State College, one-year full-tuition scholarship
• Pacific Science Center Certificate of Achievement special category award
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

 Elisabeth Berger, Powering a Solid State Fermenter with Compost Cogeneration To Produce Spores for Use as a Myopesticide

• 1st place in Environmental Engineering Category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

 Marko Milovanovic and Denis Chelan, Water Purification Via Hand-Powered Pump

• 2nd place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division
• US Army special category award in life sciences special category award

 Roshni Srikanth Integrating Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Principles Within an App To Help Manage and Improve the Mental Health of Refugees Facing Traumatic Stress

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

 Anika Ghelani  A Behavioral and Neurophysiological Analysis of False Memories Implanted Through Imagination Inflation and Misinformation Effect For the Distinction of False Memories

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

 Mirra Chinta, Synergism or Antagonism between Docetaxel and Finasteride in Prostate Cancer Model

 2nd place in Biomedical and Health Sciences category, Senior Division

 Kristin Acheson, The Effects of Ascorbic Acid on the Binding Between Collagen and Catechin

• 1st place in Chemistry Category, Senior Division
• American Chemical Society-Puget Sound Section special category Award, $25
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

 Madison Messina and Eden Netz, The Correlation of Posting Publicly on Social Media and Anxious Sleep Patterns in Teenagers

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

 Van Monday, Examining the Correlation Between County Demographics and the Effectiveness of Major Environmental Legislation

• 1st place in Earth and Environmental Sciences Category, Senior Division

 Manasvini Calmidi, Determining the Most Effective Salt Concentration of Irrigation Water for Trichoderma harzianam to Confer Salt Tolerance Through Symbiosis to Oryza sativa Plants

 Bronze Prize Grand Champion Award, won an all expense paid trip to Phoenix, ISEF Finalist

• 1st place in Plant Sciences Category, Senior Division
• Washington State University - College of Arts and Sciences $16,000 scholarship
• Seattle Pacific University scholarship - $8000 over 4 years
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

• Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologies special category award
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Plant Sciences Achievement special category Award, $150
• Pacific Science Center Certificate of Achievement special category award

 Roman Kaur Menstrual Hygiene Period

• 1st place in Environmental Engineering Category, Senior Division

 Mathias Foster, Development of a Perpetual Solar-Powered Blimp to Aid Urban Search and Rescue

• 1st place in Robotics Category, Senior Division

 Toma Itagaki, Examining the Activation of Default Mode Networks in Non-Visual Blinks

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division
• US Army special category award in life sciences special category award

 Max Reisman Low Cost Solar Desalination System Utilizing Salt-Rejecting and Solar Absorber Technology for Quick and Efficient Desalination

 2nd place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division

• Marine Sciences Outstanding Research in biology, chemistry, physics and geology special category award
• Olympic College Outstanding STEM project special category Award
• Washington National Guard Top Scientific or Engineering project Certificate of Excellence, $200

 Sunya Mohammed Implementing Eye-Tracking Technology For the Advancement of Driver Training

• 1st place in Systems Software category, Senior Division
• US Army special category award in mathematics and computer sciences special category award
• Health and Safety (PNS-AIHA) Excellence Award

 Isha Murali Exploration into Analyzing the Auditory Cortex in Relation to Attention as Measured by Alpha and Beta Waves

 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division

 Annie Denton  Forecasting the Effects of Climate Change on the Distribution of the Pacific Sideband Snail

 1st place in Animal Sciences category, Senior Division

• USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station award, $50
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Phoenix

 Hemant Dhokia Involuntary Muscle Contraction to Determine If Someone is Lying or Telling the Truth

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

 Varun Srikhar and Siddarth Shende, The Analysis of Environmental Factors Through the Implementation of a Machine Learning-Backed Aerial Drone For Increased Accuracy in Forest Fire Risk Assessment

 1st place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division

• Normal E Borlaug Excellence in Sustainability Award, $100
• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award

 

 

Please join us in congratulating our nine scholars and our colleague Melissa Wrenchey who were honored this weekend at the NCWIT Washington: Seattle & West Affiliate Award Celebration.  

 The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing builds a talent pool for the growing technical workforce and helps academic and corporate organizations celebrate diversity in computing by honoring young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Award recipients are selected based on their aptitude and aspirations in technology and computing; leadership ability; academic history; and plans for post-secondary education.

 Please congratulate:

• Maya Chhong – Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Vidhi Jain – Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Aditi Joshi – Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Amrita Narasimhan – Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Aashna Sheth – Affiliate Award
• Daniela Shuman – Affiliate Award & National Honorable Mention
• Roshni Srikanth – Affiliate Honorable Mention
• Tarini Srikanth – Affiliate Award & National Honorable Mention
• Thali Tsai – Affiliate Award & National Honorable Mention

 The Aspirations in Computing Educator Award identifies outstanding educators who play a pivotal role in encouraging young women to explore their interest in computing and technology, and recognizes these educators for their efforts to promote gender equity in computing. Our own Melissa Wrenchey was a recipient of the Educator Award this year. Melissa’s passion for engaging young women in computing and technology is inspiring.

We all want to say how proud we are of all of our scholars.  They represented Tesla STEM very well. Also thank you to Kate Atvars and Mike Hansen whose help was invaluable. 

Board Games: 4^th place-  Team of Shubhu Purohit, Aditya Balasubramanian, Rohan Anand, Yash Kulkarni, Aakash Ramachandran

Children’s Stories 4^th place: QingHui Xie, Annie Denton

CAD 3D Engineering 3^rd place Maxwell Wang

Engineering Design 3^rd place-Team of Kevin Yap, Laila Kuhn, Rudy Banjeree, Annie Denton

                                   2^nd place-Team of Dharini Sribalaskandarajah, Sashu Shankar and Ila Sharma

                                    1^st place-Team of Jakob Bjorner, Devesh Sarda, Anirudh Iyer, Sebastian Wick and Mathias Foster

Fashion Design 2^nd place-Team of Tichada Tantasirikorn and Annie Denton

Future Technology Teacher 1^st place Samarjit Kaushik

Music Production 4^th place-Amrutha Srikanth and Rachel Alwin

Robotics Challenge 2^nd place Team of Brian Yao and Aakash Ramachandran

Software Development 3^rd place Team of Aakash Ramachandran, Surya Gorantla, Varun Venkatesh, Aditi Balasubramanian, Devesh Sarda and Pranav Sukumar

Structural Engineering 3^rd place-Team of Lahari Nidadavolu and Jakob Bjorner

Webmaster 4^th place-Team of Mathias Foster, Akshay Murthy, Tristan Stevens, Ranveer Thind

Coding 4^th place-Maxwell Wang

Extemporaneous Speech 4^th place-Ranveer Thind

Technology Problem Solving 1^st place-Team of Tristan Stevens and Maxwell Wang

VEX Robotics 2^nd place-Team of Tristan Stevens, Mathias Foster and Maxwell Wang

                        1^st place-Team of Brian Yao and Aakash Ramachandran

 

Many of these students qualified to attend the National conference at the end of June in Washington DC.  Please congratulate these students when you see them around.

Please join us in congratulating our knowledge bowl team that competed in the state competition in the 2A division this Saturday in Yakima and came home with 2^nd place out of 18 teams! This is Tesla’s first year competing in knowledge bowl and the team in 1^st was the overall winner (all divisions) at our regional competition. Our scholars conducted themselves maturely and played their matches very well. They had the top score in their division in the written round. They clutched their semi-final round with a well-played challenge that led to a nail biter tie breaker round.

 Please extend your congratulations to:

• Yuchen Li (captain)
• Matthew Lam
• Maxwell Soh
• Saketh Dhulipalla
• Atharv Dixit

 You can see all the results of their division here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13sWf3XgjRrGyfxNyV4YgYt5F3IJZ9l_W40ulqgLGccI/edit#gid=0

Please congratulate our scholars on a tremendous showing at CSRSEF on Saturday - students raked in a record number of 37 awards including a grand prize winner who won an all expense paid trip to compete at the INTEL International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix. It is important to note that even if they did not receive a prize, ALL students who participated put forth a huge amount of time and effort and I was so impressed with our students’ poise, professionalism and grace at the fair.

The following students received the following awards:

Behavioral and Social Sciences (BEHA)

1st place: Madison Messina and Eden Netz, Assessing the Effects of Posting Publicly on Social Media in Correlation to Anxious Sleep Patterns in Teenagers

2nd place: Roshni Srikanth, App to Improve the Mental Health of Refugees

3rd place: Rachel Alwan and Anika Ghelani, A Behavioral and Neurophysiological Analysis of False Memories

Honorable Mention: Marton Teichner, Investigating the Effects of Education on the Impact of Astroturfing

Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Microbiology (CELL)

1st place: Mirra Chinta, Synergism or Antagonism between Docetaxel and Finasteride in Prostate Cancer Model

2nd place: Anusha Srivastava, Assessing the Apoptotic Effect of the Bacteriocin Nisin on Metastatic Breast Cancer Cell Viability

3rd place: Aditi Ekbote and Vidhi Jain, Drug Combinations with Antibiotics and Curcumin to Combat Antibiotic Drug Resistance

Biomedical Engineering (BMEG)

3rd place: Nitisha Gautam Arundhati (Diya) Basu, Genomic Differences Between E-cigarette Vapor and Cigarette Smoke and its Relation to Tumor Growth

Biomedical and Health Sciences (BMED), Translational Medicine (TMED)

1st place: Aditi Subramanyam, Identifying TEAD Proteins and Disrupting the YAP1/TEAD Complex to Inhibit Oncogenic YAP1 Fusion Proteins

Honorable Mention: Anirudh Iyer, Analyzing miRNA Expression in Glioblastoma Patients to Identify Candidate Markers

Chemistry; Chemical Energy; Material Sciences (Chem)

3rd place: Mintra Frazzini, Engineering Environmentally Friendly Sunscreen Using Metal Organic Frameworks

Honorable Mention: Saketh Dhulipalla and Yuchen Li, Access to Clean Potable Water Via Fog Harvesting

Software Systems; Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (COMP)

Honorable Mention: Sunya Mohammed, Implementing Eye-Tracking Technology for the Advancement of Driver Training

Animal Sciences; Plant Sciences; Earth and Environmental Sciences (ERTH) 

2nd place: Annie Denton, Forecasting the Effects of Climate Change on the Distribution of the Pacific Sideband Snail

3rd place: Elisabeth Berger, Powering a Solid State Fermenter with Compost Cogeneration To Produce Spores for Use as a Myopesticide

 Environmental Engineering (ENEV)

1st place: Romanpreet Kaur, Menstrual Hygiene Period

3rd place: Max Reisman, Solar Desalination System Utilizing Salt-Rejecting and Solar Absorber Technology for Quick and Efficient Technology

Honorable Mention: Kishan Baliga, Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Data to Create a Machine Learning Algorithm Capable of Identifying Oil Spills

Physics; Mathematics; Physical Energy; Embedded Systems (Phys)

Honorable Mention: Akshay Murthy, Greet Sense: A Facial Recognition and Obstacle Detection Device for the Visually- Impaired and Blind

Mechanical Engineering (MCEG)

2nd place: Tristan Stevens and Maxell Wang, Using a Bi-Layer Geogrid System to Decrease Vertical Stress and Deflection of Pavement Applications

Robotics (ROBO)

2nd place: Mathias Foster, Development of a Perpetual Solar-Powered Blimp to Aid Urban Search and Rescue

Special Category Awards:

Inspiring Excellence in Scientific Research: Roshni Srikanth, App to Improve the Mental Health of Refugees

 American Psychological Association (APA) Award: Madison Messina and Eden Netz, Assessing the Effects of Posting Publicly on Social Media in Correlation to Anxious Sleep Patterns in Teenagers

 Materials Science special category Award: Mintra Frazzini, Engineering Environmentally Friendly Sunscreen Using Metal Organic Frameworks 

Excellence in bacteria research-environmental science Award: Anusha Srivastava, Assessing the Apoptotic Effect of the Bacteriocin Nisin on Metastatic Breast Cancer Cell Viability

WSSEF Award: Akshay Murthy, Greet Sense: A Facial Recognition and Obstacle Detection Device for the Visually- Impaired and Blind

American Chemical Society (ACS) Prize: Mintra Frazzini, Engineering Environmentally Friendly Sunscreen Using Metal Organic Frameworks

American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Award: Mathias Foster, Development of a Perpetual Solar-Powered Blimp to Aid Urban Search and Rescue

Supernova Awards: Isha Murali, Exploration into Analyzing the Auditory Cortex in Relation to Attention as Measured by Alpha Waves

and

Parbeen Sekhon and Rhea Shinde, Setting Minutiae Standards in Forensic Odontology

and

Kristin Acheson, The Effects of Ascorbic Acid on the Binding of Collagen and Tannins

and

Tarini Srikanth, Modeling Potential Drug to Drug Interactions Targeted Towards Cardiovascular Systems

and

Manasvini Calmidi, Determining the Salt Concentration of Irrigation Water for Trichoderma to Confer Salt Tolerant Oryza sativa Plants

and

Marko Milovanovic and Denis Chelan, Water Purification Via Hand-Powered Pump

 Ricoh Sustainable Environmental Science Award: Elisabeth Berger, Powering a Solid State Fermenter with Compost Cogeneration To Produce Spores for Use as a Myopesticide

Office of Naval Science Research Award: Sunya Mohammed, Implementing Eye-Tracking Technology for the Advancement of Driver Training

And congratulations to one of the three GRAND PRIZE WINNERS who won an all-expense paid trip to Phoenix to compete at ISEF....Aditi Subramanyam for her investigation with Identifying TEAD Proteins and Disrupting the YAP1/TEAD Complex to Inhibit Oncogenic YAP1 Fusion Proteins. Aditi will compete along with approximately 1,800 high school students from more  than 75 countries, regions, and territories. Students at ISEF are awarded the opportunity to showcase their independent research and compete for on average $4 million in prizes.

We had a record 18 students participate in the Biology Olympiad Open Exam this year. 

 Two students scored in the top 10% of all students taking the exam, and qualified for Semifinals which will take place on 3/21: 

 Maxwell Soh

Jiachi (George) Zhang 

 We all congratulate them on making it this far! 

HOSA had an exceptional weekend at the State Leadership Conference in Spokane, WA.  Before listing all of the accomplishments earned at the competition, I just want to state how incredibly proud I am of the HOSA team.  Our students clearly set themselves apart with their outstanding leadership and professionalism.  I am very grateful to Matt Travis, who once again has helped chaperone the trip this year.  Christine Lee, our chapter president, rose to the challenge of being an excellent leader and communicator with the club.  I could not have gotten everything done with our her help and the help of the leadership team.  Anika Ghelani was name the Washington State HOSA president, and I know will do an excellent job next year as the new state leader.

 Here are the students who place in their respective events:

 Individual Events 

 Prakriti Shukla 3rd in Medical Terminology, 5th in Clinical Specialty

Ankita Menon 4th in Human Grown and Development, 3rd in Extemporaneous Writing

Ananya Nandula 2nd in Nutrition

Jessica Singh 5th in Pathophysiology

Christine Lee 1st in Extemporaneous Writing

Suhani Arora 3rd in Researched Persuasive Writing and Speaking

Anusha Srivastava 2nd in Research Persuasive Writing and Speaking

 Team Events

 Anika Ghelani, Rachel Alwan, Anusha Strivastava 4th in Biomedical Debate

Amrita Narasimhan, Eesha Murali, Megha Mattikalli 1st in Biomedical Debate

Laura Mangov, Jessica Wang, Jennifer Hu, Leo Ribeiro de Brito 2nd in Community Awareness

Samarjit Kaushik and Anirudh Iyer 4th in Community Awareness

Amrita Narasimhan and Sonika Tayade 2nd Forensic Science

Anika Ghelani and Rachel Alwan 4th in Forensic Science

Laura Mangov and Ojas Rayaprolu 3rd in Health Career Display

Jennifer Hu and Aheli Dutta 2nd in Health Career Display

Sameera Balijepalli and Nitisha Gautam 3rd in Health Education

Anisha Karnik and Suhani Arora 3rd in Existing Medical Innovation

Ayushi Desai and Reeteka Kudallur 1st in Exiting Medical Innovation

Anagha Polapragada and Jessica Singh 1st in Original Medical Innovation

Sameera Balijepalli and Ananya Nandula 4th in Original Medical Innovation

Diya Basu and Nitisha Gautam 3rd in Original Medical Innovation

 Tesla Also took home Gold Prize for the Barbara James Service Award  and 1st in the MRC Volunteer Award, with a lot of hard work from Jessica Singh.

 Thank you for your continued support of HOSA and the students that have achieved so much.

 

Meg Stockbridge PhD 

Science Teacher

HOSA Advisor

The Tesla STEM Model United Nations club attended the annual Washington State Model United Nations Conference on March 2^nd and 3^rd, where they participated in debates on topics ranging from economics, human rights, world health and international justice.  The conference was held on the University of Washington campus and involved high school students from around the region.  Success at MUN requires in-depth research into contemporary international issues, demonstration of persuasive writing skills and outstanding public speaking skills.  The Tesla STEM delegation demonstrated dedication and teamwork, with wins in several categories.

 Congratulations to our winners:

 OUTSTANDING DELEGATE:  Christine Lee, Human Rights Council

POSITION PAPER:  Jessica Singh, Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space

POSITION PAPER:  Somya Pratapati, Economic & Social Commission for Asia & the Pacific

POSITION PAPER:  Esther Wang, Security Council

 Annie Fort

On Saturday, a few of our Tesla STEM students attended the regional competition for National History Day, and they did well.  Amrutha Srikanth (gr. 11) finished 1^st in the Senior Individual Documentary category with her work on female animators at Walt Disney Studios, and Anusha Srivastava and Esther Wang (gr. 11) finish 1^st in the Senior Group Documentary category with their piece on the early stages of the Palestinian conflict.  These three young women have qualified for the state competition to be held at Central Washington University in early May.  Leonardo Ribeiro de Brito (gr. 9) also had a very strong Senior Individual documentary on Nikola Tesla, but unfortunately did not qualify to move on to the state final competition.

Please take the time to pass on your congratulations to each of these students when you see them this week

 Andrew Ivy

DECA Inc. is pleased to announce this year’s DECA Idea Challenge global winners!

A premier event of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW), the DECA Idea Challenge dared elementary through university students to generate a new use for paper clips in merely a week! In addition to reinventing the item, teams were to create a video pitch of their new product.

With a significant amount of creativity, teamwork and determination, these teams were able to rise to the top.

 

Check out what some of our STEM students did this summer at Cartogram in Seattle!

STEM students at Cartogram internship

FBLA continued the successful streak started by TSA. With 12,000 competitors in Baltimore, STEM represented well.
8th place Public Service Announcement: Ranveer Thind and Aakash Ramanchandran
6th place Business Ethics Ila Sharma, Aashna Sheth and Amrita Narahamsin
3rd place and $200 Graphic Design Akshay Murthy.

And a huge thank you to Andrew Taylor for helping me chaperone both conferences. He flew kids home from Atlanta then turned around the next day and flew to Baltimore. And Katy Allen-Schmid, thank you for flying the FBLA kids from Seattle to Baltimore so I could fly the kids doing both conferences straight from Atlanta to Baltimore.  I couldn't have done this without help from the two of you.

Lori Zebrack-Smith

July 2, 2018

Hello All,

We just returned from Dallas, Tx today with our HOSA finalists from state. 

 Jessica Singh brought home a silver metal for the Barbara James Service Award.

 This year's competition had over 11,000 students from all over the world. 

We're very proud of all the students who attended. While we didn't bring home as many awards as we would have liked, the students were incredibly respectful and responsive while representing our school and district at the competition.  We

We could not be more proud of them. 

 Thank you so much to Matt Travis who attended this conference, as he has in years past.  His wisdom and wit were much appreciated. 

Dr. M. Stockbridge

Congratulations to our awesome students for their fabulous work at TSA National conference amongst 8000 competitors

Top 10 winners: Victoria Alkin in Extemporaneous Speech, Ranveer Thind in STEM Careers

2nd Place in STEM Careers Sashwatha Shankar

1st place Lahari Nidadavolu and Jakob Bjorner in Structural Design and Engineering. They broke the 4 year winning streak of the previous winners

1st Place Dharini Sribalaskandarajah, Ila Sharma, Sashwatha Shankar in Engineering Design

6th place Biotechnology Victoria Alkin, Kushal Kedia, Jadrian Png, Thalia Tsai

Akshay Murthy won 9^th place for Promotional Design

 

June 8, 2018

Our students had a great showing at Hunt the Wumpus this year taking home 2 of 3 Runners-Up and 2^nd place for Best Implementation. We're so proud of all our students who worked really hard on these projects and came up with some really great games.

 Team: Wump.Us – Runners Up

1. Maxwell Wong
2. Siddharth Sherde
3. Surya Gorantla
4. Tony Li
5. Arnav Sacheti
6. Tristan Stevens

Team: Spice Girls – Runners Up

1. Swararthmika Kakivaya
2. Aryo Karai
3. Archi Faugno
4. Luca Chang
5. Tiger McDaniel
6. Eric Bethune

Team: Unicorn Ninjas - 2^nd Place Best Implementation

1. Rachel Alwan
2. Pamela Cheema
3. Roshni Srikanth
4. Sowmya Pratipati
5. Diya Basu
6. Amrutha Srikanth

May 21, 2018

We are so proud of the BioMed seniors at the NWABR Bio Expo last Friday (May 18). While everyone was well prepared and did an amazing job, some students were chosen by the judges to be highlighted. The list of their awards follows:

SMART 3D Printing and Design

• 1^st place – Vaishnavi Phadnis and Rashida Hakim
• 3^rd place – Michelle Yeh, Davina Lau, and Katherine Bo
• Honorable mentions: Brandon Stumpel and Devin McGlynn, Megan Kodati, and Mimi Lee

Lab Research

• Honorable mention to Christina Goto and Prerena Kulkarni

Neuroscience

• 2^nd place – Anna Gimera and Donovan Hesselroth

I have never seen a group of students work so diligently to polish their presentations and strengthen their team work right up until judging time as this group. I have no doubt that what happened in the last 24 hours before the competition produced several of our first place awards. That said, here are this year's winners.

Cheers, Arny Leslie

Challenge Topic 1: The Itron Food, Energy, and Water Challenge – Design Approach – 2nd Place

Title: Integrated Denitrifying Bioreactor and Edge of Field Monitoring System Application Through Federal Policy Initiatives

Team Members: Rachel Alwan, Anusha Srivastava, Ester Wang

Challenge Topic 1: The Itron Food, Energy, and Water Challenge – Multi-Approach – 1^st Place

Title: Toilets for Education

Team Members: Vidhi Jain, Aditi Joshi, Lahari Nidadavolu, Roshni Srikanth, Tarini Srikanth

Challenge Topic 2: The Boeing Aerospace and Transportation Challenge – Design Approach – 1st Place, & Special Award for Exceptional Teamwork

Title: Producing Biofuels and Preventing Eutrophication Through the Application of a Passive Filtration System Utilizing Localized Algae Blooms

Team Members: Ayushi Desai, Ayan Gupta, Daniel Shaikh, Rhea Shinde, Anna Whiteside

Challenge Topic 3: McKinstry Built Environment Challenge – Technology Approach – 1^st Place

Title: Implementing Hyperaccumulators and Pervious Concrete to Redesign Roads for the Phytoremediation of Runoff while Drastically Reducing Civil Infrastructure Construction Costs

Team Members: Mathias Foster, Anika Ghelani, Tristan Stevens, Rishika Veeramachaneni, Maxwell Wang

Another fabulous showing by our students at the FBLA State Leadership conference this last weekend in Bellevue. The top four automatically qualify for the National conference in Baltimore at the end of June. Places 5 – 10 have the potential to move up if competitors who placed above them cannot attend. And a special thank you to Meg Stockbridge for helping as a chaperone. Please join us in congratulating the following winners:

Advertising: Emma Drapp 9^th place

Broadcast Journalism: Team of Sonika Tayade and Amrita Narahasim 3^rd place; team of Catherine Oei, Rayan Krishnan and Aaskash Ramachandran 5^th place

Business Ethics: Team of Amrita Narahasim, Ila Sharma and Aashna Sheth 1^st place

Business Financial Plan: Team of Rishi Kavikondala and Aashna Sheth 3^rd place

Business Plan: Team of Sonika Tayade and Sashu Shankar 2^nd place, team of Siddharth Shende and Caleb John 4^th place

Coding and Programming: Maxwell Wang 1^st place, Pranav Sukumar 3^rd place

Cybersecurity: Pranav Sukumar 10^th place

Database and Design: Rishi Kavikondala 5^th place

Electronic Career Portfolio: Ritika Iyer 4^th, Sonika Tayade 6^th, Victoria Alkin 8^th

Entrepreneurship: Siddharth Shinde 1^st, team of Ranveer Thind, Rayan Krishnan and Aaskah Ramachandran 4^th

Graphic Design: Team of Ritika Iyer and Akshay Murthy 1^st, Andrew Nguyen 9^th

Introduction to Business Presentation: Team of Mihika Vankamamidi, An Doan and Claire Yang 5^th

Introduction to FBLA Procedures: Deveshi Thakar 1^st place

Introduction to Public Speaking: Siddharth Shinde 8^th place

Management Information Systems: Team of Ranveer Thind and Maxwell Wang 1^st place

Marketing: Team of Sashu Shankar and Varun Vankatesh 1^st place

Public Service Announcement: Team of Ranveer Thind and Aakash Ramachandran 1^st place

Website Design: Team of Andrew Nguyen, Pranav Sukumar and Jack Tribolet 4^th place

Word Processing: Ritika Iyer 7^th place

We also received the Chapter Report Initiative Award

Congratulations to the following students for their great work at TSA this weekend and a HUGE thank you to Matt S and Meg for their help chaperoning and judging.
Coding- 3rd place Maxwell Wang, Ranveer Thind and Aditya B
Extemporaneous Speech 5th place Victoria Alkin
3D Animation Arjan Singh and Vivek Gopalam, 4th place Daniela Shuman and Dharini S
Biotech Design 2nd place Audrey Tseng, Olivia Blevins and Goutam Krishnamoorthy, 1st place Thalia Tsai, Jadrian Png, Victoria Alkin and Kushal Kedia
Promotional Design 3rd place Betty Park, 2nd place Akshay Murthy
SciVis 5th place Niranjan Sahi, Aakash Ramachandran, Rishi Kavikondala and Ryan Koshy
Software Development 4th place Daniela Shuman, Thalia Tsai and Matthew Saveliev
STEM Careers 5th place Amrita Narasimhan, 4th place Varun Venkatesh, 3rd place Sashwatha Shankar, 1st place Rayan Thind
Robotics 5th place Mathias Foster and Maxwell Wang, 3rd place Ayan Gupta, Ryan Kushy, Akshay Murthy, Tristan Stevens
Prepared Presentation 5th place Pranav Sukumar
Engineering Design 5th place Rishi Kacikondala, Lahari N, Daniela Shuman, Ranveer Thind and Ritika Iyer, 4th place Varun Venkatesh, Aakash Ramachandran, Kushal Kedia, 3rd Place Audrey Tseng, Dharini S, Ila Sharma, First place William Wang, Pranav Sukumar, Tej Sathe, Niranjan Sahi, Osbert Lee
Essays on Technology 2nd place Thalia Tsai,
Future Technology Teacher 2nd place Daniela Shuman.
The top 3 in each event automatically qualified for the National Conference in Atlanta in June.

Please congratulate our your scholars who participated in the 62nd Annual Washington Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) at Bremerton High school last weekend. We had one of our esteemed students take home the GRAND PRIZE winner of the whole fair and he will be going to Pittsburgh for the International Science and Engineering Fair in May. Please congratulate the following students who competed and won awards and at WSSEF on March 25th.

Eudoxie Hudry and Nisha Thottam, Improving the Production of the Anti-Cancer Drug Paclitaxel Through Biosynthesis in Bacteria

• 1^st place in Cellular and Molecular Biology Category, Senior Division
• Society for In Vitro Biology special category award

Ishika Mukherjee and Eesha Murali, Viability of Urinary Polyamine levels as a Preliminary Test for Cancer

• 1^st place in Biomedical Engineering Category, Senior Division

Rayan Krishnan, Utilizing Idealized Simulations to Investigate the Impacts of Carbon Emissions on Polar Vortex

• 1st place in Environmental Sciences Category, Senior Division
• NASA Langely Research Center special category award, invited to present at NASA Virtual Science Colloquium

Amrita Narasimhan, Applying Machine Learning Techniques for Identification of Discriminative Biomarkers

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division
• US Army special category award in computer and biomedical sciences

Neha Hulkund, MRI Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation Using Deep Learning

• 1st place place in Embedded Systems Category, Senior Division
• INTEL Excellence in Computer Science Award, $250
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• US Army special category award in computer sciences

• Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
• Evergreen State College one quarter tuition scholarship
• Side note: was also pulled for ISEF judging and almost won a trip to Pittsburgh

Lukas Spring, Examining the Potential of Smile Photography and the Importance of the Maxillary Incisors in the Identification of Disaster Victims

• 2nd place in the Biomedical and Health Sciences Category, Senior Division

Anjali and Akash Srivastava, Building an App to Improve Reading Readiness of Children

• 1st place in Systems Software Category, Senior Division

Prerna Sheokand, Blue Light Effects on Working Memory of Preschoolers

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

William Wang, Drones Optimized Through Neural Networks for Reconnaissance and Imaging of Martian Environments

• Gold Prize Grand Champion Award, ISEF Finalist
• IEEE - Seattle electro-technology special category award, $75
• Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
• Pacific Science Center special category award
• Museum of Flight special category award
• Washington State University - Voliland College of Engineering and Architecture $8000 scholarship
• Universal Quality Control (UQC) special category award
• U.S Airforce special category award
• Evergreen State College one year full tuition scholarship
• Arizona State University - Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives award
• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University $8000 scholarship

Kyra Bethune, Incorporation of Self-Esteem Enhancement Strategies in Social Media

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division
• American Psychological Association Award

Sashwatha Shankar, Generating a Machine Learning Model to Determine the Metastatic Potential of Lung Cancer Tumors

• 1st place in Biomedical and Health Sciences, Senior Division
• Society for In Vitro Biology special category award

Sarah Suhy, Siderocalin and Its Interactions with Adipocytes

• 1st place in Cellular and Molecular Biology Category, Senior Division

Megha Mattikalli, Advancing Diagnosis of Lung Cancer using Visual Biomarkers

• 1st place in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Category, Senior Division
• U.S. Army special category biomedical sciences category

Ritika Iyer, The Application of Infrared Thermography to Architecture to Identify Heat-Emitting Building Materials

• 1^st place in Environmental Sciences category, Senior Division

Pranay Muthineni, Making Desalination Cost Effective and more Efficient for Third World Countries Using Solar Power

• 1st place Environmental Engineering Category, Senior Division
• IEEE - Seattle Section, computer science special category award, $75

Christine Lee, The Efficacy of Counter-Stereotypical Scenario in Reducing Racial Implicit Bias

• 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division

Jack Tribolet, Generating Haptic Feedback Based Upon Calculated Data and User Information

• 1st place in Embedded Systems Category, Senior Division

Aashna Sheth, The Application of Microwave Satellite to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS)

• 1st place in Mathematics Category, Senior Division
• Office of Naval Research - U.S. Army/U.S. Marine Corps award
• Mu Alpha Theta Certificate of Achievement Mathematics award, $75
• Sigma Xi, Scientific Research Society special category award
• U.S. Army special category award in computer science
• USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station award, $50
• American Meteorological Society special category award

Sonika Tayade and Hamsa Shankar, Predictions Using National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys

• 1st place in Biomedical and Health Sciences Category, Senior Division

Jeremy Yang, Pop Dungeon

• 1st place in Systems Software Category, Senior Division

We are extremely proud of all of our students who competed and attended the HOSA State Conference in Spokane, WA this March. Our students' excellence and professionalism set them apart. The following students earned a top spot in their event (1-3rd place go on to the HOSA International Competition in June):

Individual Awards

• Niranjan Sahi- 1st place in Dental Science
• Christine Lee - 5th place in Extemporaneous Writing
• Sreejita Ghose - 3rd place in Healthy Lifestyle
• Graciela Lagraba - 3rd place in Prepared Speaking
• Anush Srivastava - 2nd place in Researched Persuasive Writing
• Katie Chalmers - 4th place in Veterinary Science
• Viashnavi Phadnis - 2nd place in Medical Terminology
• Lauren Kim - 4th place in Nutrition (knowledge test)
• Ananya Nandula - 5th place in Nutrition (knowledge test)
• Niranjan Sahi - 2nd place in Dental Terminology (knowledge test)
• Eesha Murali - 5th place in Medical Assisting

Team Awards

• Anika Ghelani, Rishika Veeramachaneni, Rachel Alway, Anusha Srivastava - 1st place in Biomedical Debate
• Aditi Subramanyam and Daphnie Chan - 5th place in Community Awareness
• Daphnie Chan and Nitisha Gautam - 4th place in Health Career Display
• Ayushi Desai and Nitisha Gautum - 2nd place in Health Education
• Ayushi Desai and Reeteka Kudallur - 5th place in Medical Innovation - Existing
• Eudoxie Hudry and Nisha Thottam - 3rd place in Medical Innovation - Existing
• Anika Ghelani, Rishika Veeramachaneni, Sunya Mohammed - 2nd place in Medical Innovation - Original
• Diya Basu and Sameera Balijepalli - 3rd place in Medical Innovation - Original
• Suhani Arora and Jessica Singh - 2nd place in Medical Innovation - Existing

We also brought home the MRC Volunteer Recognition Award and won 2nd place in the Barbara James Service Award thanks to Jessica Singh

Anika Ghelani ran and won the position for Washington State President Elect.

Vaishnavi Phadnis ended her term as the Washington State HOSA President with courage and grace. She also thanked Kate Allender for her instrumental help in years past as the HOSA Advisor.

Please congratulate our scholars on a tremendous showing at CSRSEF on Saturday - students raked in 30 awards and even if they did not receive a prize, they put forth a huge amount of time and effort and some also produced award-winning, innovative research, in my opinion.

The following students received the following awards:

Behavioral and Social Sciences (BEHA) Note: there were two second places due to high number of competitors in this category

1st place: Catherine Benson, The Effects of Changing Behavioral Tendencies Toward a Person with Schizophrenia or Psychosis NOS

2nd place: Claire Whiteside, Perceived Credibility of Political Advertisements on Facebook

and

2nd Place: Kyra Bethune, Incorporation of Self-Esteem Enhancement Strategies in Social Media

Honorable Mention: Toma Itagaki and Eric Yin, Determining the Effects of Psychological States on High Schooler's Performance in Chess

Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Microbiology (CELL)

1st place: Sarah Suhy, Siderocalin and Its Interactions with Adipocytes

2nd place: Eudoxie Hudry and Nisha Thottam, Improving the Production of the Anti-Cancer Drug Paclitaxel Through Biosynthesis in Bacteria

Biomedical Engineering, Material Science (ENBM)

1st place: Ishika Mukherjee and Eesha Murali, Viability of Urinary Polyamine levels as a Preliminary Test for Cancer

Honorable Mention: Sarah Berg, Dielectric Elastomers in 3-D Printed Prosthetic Fingers

Biomedical and Health Sciences (BMED), Translational Medicine (TMED) and Chemistry (Chem)

2nd place: Sashwatha Shankar, Generating a Machine Learning Model to Determine the Metastatic Potential of Lung Cancer Tumors

Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (CBIO)

3rd place: Amrita Narasimhan, Applying Machine Learning Techniques for Identification of Discriminative Biomarkers

Earth and Environmental Sciences (ENEV) Note: there were two honorable mentions due to high number of competitors in this category

Honorable Mention: Ritika Iyer, The Application of Infrared Thermography to Architecture to Identify Heat-Emitting Building Materials

and

Honorable Mention: Betty Park and Emma Draper, The Study of Air Quality Conditions in Relation to Renal Transplants Through a Data Analysis Approach

Embedded Systems, Robotics and Intelligent Machines (ROBO)

1st place: Neha Hulkund, MRI Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation Using Deep Learning

3rd place: Jack Tribolet and Yukito Shida, Generating Haptic Feedback Based Upon Calculated Data and User Information

Engineering Mechanics (ENMC), Environmental Engineering (ENEV)

2nd place: William Wang, Drones Optimized Through Neural Networks for Reconnaissance and Imaging of Martian Environments

Honorable Mention: Niranjan Sahi and Aditya Balasubramanian, Augmented Malleability in Pipeline Joints for Improved Resistance to Seismic Ground Forces

Physics and Astronomy (PHYS), Mathematics (Math)

1st place: Aashna Sheth, The Application of Microwave Satellite to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS)

Systems Software

2nd place: Jeremy Yang, Pop Dungeon

Special Category Awards:

Tableau Award: Claire Whiteside, Perceived Credibility of Political Advertisements on Facebook

and

Aashna Sheth, The Application of Microwave Satellite to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS)

Excellence in Scientific Research ($500): Ritika Iyer, The Application of Infrared Thermography to Architecture to Identify Heat-Emitting Building Materials

NASA Earth Systems Science Award: Betty Park and Emma Draper, The Study of Air Quality Conditions in Relation to Renal Transplants Through a Data Analysis Approach

Recipient of $1000 Bellevue College scholarship: Sam Thornton, Making Self-Regulation Tools Available to All Students

Association for Women Geoscientist's Award: Aashna Sheth, The Application of Microwave Satellite to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS)

Intel Award, Excellence in Computer Science ($200): Neha Hulkund, MRI Multiple Sclerosis Lesion Segmentation Using Deep Learning

American Chemical Society (ACS) Prize: Ishika Mukherjee and Eesha Murali, Viability of Urinary Polyamine levels as a Preliminary Test for Cancer

American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Award: William Wang, Drones Optimized Through Neural Networks for Reconnaissance and Imaging of Martian Environments

Supernova Awards: Claire Maurer, Encoding Quantifiable Data for Nose-to-Finger Test with Essential Tremor

American Meteorological Society Award: Aashna Sheth, The Application of Microwave Satellite to the Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme (SHIPS)

US Metric Associations Award: Niranjan Sahi and Aditya Balasubramanian, Augmented Malleability in Pipeline Joints for Improved Resistance to Seismic Ground Forces

We are all so very proud of all of our students.

Click to load PDF table of results

ovember 20, 2017

Tesla STEM students did a great job at this past weekend's Pacific Model UN Conference, held in Seattle. The highlight was winning the Best Large Delegation Award, which goes to the entire team. Other prizes include:

Best Delegate: Graham Sabin (G20)

Sid Shende (ECOSOC)

Outstanding Delegate: Spring Cherip (African Union)

Shaurya Vashisth (ECOSOC)

Honorable Mention: Anna Whiteside (ECOSOC)

Position Paper: Tejus Krishnan (G20)

Rishika Veeramachaneni, (Joint Crisis Committee)

Congratulations to all!