Activities
2022-23 Awards
- 2022 International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics
- American Mathematics Competition
- Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalist!
- 2 Tesla STEM Scholars named to Top 300 in Regeneron Science Talent Search
- American Mathematics Competitions (AMC)
- Science Olympiad: Results from Four Invitationals
- Washington State High School Chess Championships
- National History Day
- Writing: 2 students win Silver Key Award
- 2023 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
- 2023 King County Envirothon
- American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME)
- Central Sound Regional Science & Engineering Fair (CSRSEF)
- 2023 ExploraVision
- National Economics Challenge: Washington State Competition
- Washington Music Educators Association Honors
- 2023 Washington State Technology Student Association Competition
- 2023 Washington State National History Day
- 2023 Tesla STEM Estimathon
- 2023 FBLA State Leadership Conference
- 2023 United States National Chemistry Olympiad
- 2023 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
2022 International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics
This past summer, senior Evan Kim brought home a gold medal at the 15th 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.
American Mathematics Competition
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 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 the following students when you see them.
9th and 10th 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%)
11th and 12th Grade Division:
Yue (Beth) Ding
Evan Kim (Top 5%)
Sebastian Kumar (Top 5%)
Chris Ma
Rui Meng (Top 1%)
Abhiram Yakkali
Regeneron Science Talent Search Finalist!
2 Tesla STEM Scholars named to Top 300 in Regeneron Science Talent Search
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 82nd 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 9th. 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
American Mathematics Competitions (AMC)
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: Results from Four Invitationals
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 1st team finished in 10th place out of nearly 150 teams.
- Also in December, the team traveled south for the Camas SO Invitational. Team STEM won 1st Place, Team Leaf earned 5th Place, Team Root earned 17th Place, and Team Bud earned 24th Place.
- In January, the team spent a day with aircraft at the Raisbeck Aviation SO Invitational. Team STEM won 1st Place, Team Leaf earned 5th Place, and Team Root earned 22nd 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 7th Place (and the 6th 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: 10th Place overall
- Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 2nd place
- Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 5th place
- Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 2nd place
- Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 6th place
- Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1st place
- Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 6th place
- Green Generation: Olivia Wang & Divij Aswinkumar, 4th place
- Wifi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 6th place
Camas SO Invitational (out of 25 teams):
- Team STEM: 1st place overall
- Team Leaf: 5th place overall
- Anatomy & Physiology: Rithani Saravanakumar & Shuhui Yang, 3rd place
- Astronomy: Evan Kim & Aashray, 2nd place; Harish Krishnakumar & Rajit Joshi, 3rd place
- Cell Biology: Shuhui Yang & Grace Zhao, 2nd place; Prerana Kota & Angela Wang, 3rd place
- Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1st place; Rajit Joshi, Parik Venkataraghavan, 5th place
- Codebusters: Olivia Wang, Sebi Kumar, & Divij Aswinkumar, 1st place
- Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 3rd place; Sachita Ghosh & Keerthi Rajesh, 4th place
- Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 2nd place
- Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 1st place
- Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1st place
- Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 1st place
- Flight: Tyler Chen & Shrey Goel, 4th place
- It’s About Time: Farzad Hasan, 4th place
- Forensics: Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1st place; Prerana Kota & Tyler Chen, 2nd place
- Forestry: Olivia Wang & Neha Madanagopal, 2nd place
- Green Generation: Prerana Kota & Brenda Li, 1st place; Divij Aswinkumar & Olivia Wang, 2nd place
- Remote Sensing: Aashray & Evan Kim, 1st place
- Rocks & Minerals: Aashray & Sami Khan, 2nd place; Brenda Li & Saharsh Bhargava, 3rd place
- Bridge: Andy Pham & Neha Madanagopal, 5th place
- Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1st place
- It’s About Time: Andy Pham & Divij Aswinkumar, 5th place
- Scrambler: Siddhant Porwal & Andy Pham, 4th place
- Solar Power: Sree Sarvepalli & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 1st place
- Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 3rd place
- Wifi Lab: Sami Khan & Evan Kim, 4th place
- Write It Do It: Madeleine Vanderheiden & Mehuli Nath, 4th place
Raisbeck Aviation Invitational (out of 27 teams):
- Team STEM: 1st place overall
- Team Leaf: 5th place overall
- Anatomy & Physiology: Rithani Saravanakumar & Shuhui Yang, 3rd place
- Astronomy: Evan Kim & Aashray, 2nd place; Madeleine Vanderheiden & Rajit Joshi, 5th place
- Bridge: Neha Madanagopal & Andy Pham, 1st place; Sriram Marasanapalle & Mehuli Nath, 3rd place
- Cell Biology: Shuhui Yang & Grace Zhao, 1st place
- Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 2nd place
- Codebusters: Olivia Wang, Sebi Kumar, & Divij Aswinkumar, 1st place
- Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1st place
- Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 2nd place; Sachita Ghosh & Keerthi Rajesh, 4th place
- Environmental Chemistry: Sebi Kumar and Sami Badal Khan, 1st place
- Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Siddhant Porwal, & Sree Sarvepalli, 1st place
- Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 2nd place
- Flight: Rithani Saravanakumar & Neha Madanagopal, 3rd place
- Forensics: Anjali Sreenivas & Rithani Saravanakumar, 1st place; Prerana Kota & Tyler Chen, 2nd place
- Forestry: Olivia Wang & Neha Madanagopal, 1st place; Naomi Stahl & Katya Rukhlinskaia, 4th place
- Green Generation: Prerana Kota & Brenda Li, 5th place
- It’s About Time: Andy Pham & Divij Aswinkumar, 1st place
- Remote Sensing: Aashray & Evan Kim, 1st place
- Rocks & Minerals: Aashray & Sami Khan, 2nd place; Brenda Li & Saharsh Bhargava, 4th place
- Scrambler: Siddhant Porwal & Andy Pham, 2nd place
- Solar Power: Shrey Goel & Madeleine Vanderheiden, 1st place; Sree Sarvepalli & Aashray, 2nd place
- Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 2nd place
- Wifi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 3rd place
Golden Gate Science Olympiad (out of 53 teams):
- Team STEM: 7th Place overall
- Chemistry Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Sebi Kumar, 2nd Place
- Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Grace Zhao, 8th Place
- Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 7th Place
- Environmental Chemistry: Ashwin Kaliyaperumal & Sebi Kumar, 6th Place
- Experimental Design: Siddhant Porwal, Sree Sarvepalli, & Anjali Sreenivas, 3rd Place
- Fermi Questions: Evan Kim & Sebi Kumar, 1st Place
- Green Generation: Divij Aswinkumar & Olivia Wang, 7th Place
- Remote Sensing: Aashray & Evan Kim, 1st Place
- Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Sree Sarvepalli, 4th Place
Washington State High School Chess Championships
From coach Matt Sturtevant:
The Tesla STEM Chess Club/Team finished their regular season Mid-February in the KingCo chess league, finishing in 5th 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 6th 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
National History Day
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.
Writing: 2 students win Silver Key Award
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!!
2023 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
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!
2023 King County Envirothon
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.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME)
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 21st and Wednesday, March 22nd during the school day. Each day consists of 3 questions over 4.5 hours.
Central Sound Regional Science & Engineering Fair (CSRSEF)
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
1st 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
4th 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)
2nd 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
1st place: Nikki Taleghani*, Carbon Dot and Cyanoacrylate Fuming Method for Latent Fingerprint Detection
3rd place: Yutaro Urata, Generating Novel Bioplastics Using GAN
4th 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
2nd place: Ansh Bayappu*, An Everting Vine Robot with a Pneumatic Soft Gripper
3rd place: John Karaca, Ensemble-Based Learning Model for Deepfake Detection
4th 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.
2023 ExploraVision
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.)
- Using Virtual Reality to Treat ICU Psychosis (Bhavya Nandikanti, Tanvi Sapar, and Tanvi Anand)
- OHCT: One Hair Cell at a Time – Using Atoh1 Molecules to Reverse Hearing Loss (Madhu Rasiah, Aubrey Grove, and Nuha Rahman)
- HemoSyn: A Novel Approach to Immune Functionality in Hematology (Manovay Sharma, Ayush Singh, and Arihant Singh)
Please congratulate these students if you see them!
National Economics Challenge: Washington State Competition
From advisor Ms. Ryfka Schafer:
Four students from the Tesla STEM Economics Club competed in the National Economics Challenge and placed 3rd 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.
Washington Music Educators Association Honors
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!
2023 Washington State Technology Student Association Competition
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:
- 2nd 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:
- 2nd 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:
- 1st 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:
- 1st Place: Brenda Li and Keerthana Radapuram
- Top 5: Laura Shang, Sanskriti Sinha, Pallavi Thiruveedu, and Shreeyaa Muhunthan
Engineering Design:
- 2nd 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):
- 2nd Place: Vivaan Pradhan and Krishnaprasath Senthil Kumar
- 3rd Place: Aryaman Rtunjay and Raghav Kalyana Sundaram
VEX Robotics:
- 1st Place: Pranay Nookala and Farzad Hasan
Geospatial Technology
- 2nd 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
2023 Washington State National History Day
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
2023 Tesla STEM Estimathon
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.
2023 FBLA State Leadership Conference
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: 1st Pia Dave and Kaavya Trivedi
Broadcast Journalism: 5th Omid Faradahl, Laya Nair and Divya Singh; 3rd place Kshitij Rao, Anirudh Seshardi, Rohan Singh, 1st place Pia Dave and Kaavya Trivedi
Business Ethics: 10th Vidit Khandalia, Rithvik Koppolu and Ayaan Kumar
Business Financial Plan: 10th Abhinav Nadupalli and Alekhya Nidadavolu
Business Management: 4th Shriya Tiku and Anusha Pandey
Business Plan: 7th Aaryan Bondre, Gyan Dave and Karina Kejriwal
Coding and Programming: 6th Ayaan Hussain, Tejas Pakalapati and Siddarth Pallovola; 5th Divij Aswinkumar, Rishi Dilip and Vasudha Narayanan
Data Analysis: 10th Pearly Agarwall and Gayathri Pillai
Digital Video Production: 4th Kshitij Rao, Anirudh Seshardi and Rohan Singh
E-Business: 9th Aahil Irfan and Saathvik Somujayabalan
Electronic Career Portfolio: 4th Harini Vijeyanandh
Future Business Leader: 6th Tarun Mahadevan
Hospitality Management: 6th Rajiv Arvind, Tejaswi Erattu and Pranav Kannepalli
Impromptu Speaking 4th Kaavya Trivedi
Introduction to Business Presentation: 1st Varshini Hari and Layla Kaim
Introduction to Social Media 8th Madison Desilva, Shriya Kapala and Liya Sebastian
Job Interview 2nd Harini Vijeyanandh
Marketing: 8th Achintya Agrawal, Samyuktha Krishnan and Saranya Pammi; 3rd Rishi Dilip, Tashfiq Rashad and Sourish Singh; 1st Divij Aswinkmar, Nimai Belur and Pranay Nookala
Mobile App Development: 7th Krish Katre and Tejas Pakalapati, 2nd place Farzad Hasan, Mitra Junu and Rohit Karthik
Public Speaking 5th Cindy Chen
Publication Design: 5th Karina Kejrwal, Aarav Khanna and Isayiah Lim
Sales Presentation 2nd: Aaryan Bondre, Gyan Dave and Tanush Contractor
Social Media Strategies: 6th Anshu Aggarwal, Varsha Mantravadi and Prakshi Shukla, 2nd Rishi Dilip, Tashfiq Rashid and Sourish Singh, 1st: Aarav Khanna, Karina Kejriwal and Bhavya Nandikanti,
Sports Management: 8th Immaz Khan, Chaithu Thandu and Pranav Sayal
Spreadsheet Applications: 1st Vasudha Narayanan
Website Design: 2nd Anshu Aggarwal and Saathvik Somujayabalan, 1st place Shreya Pandey and Sarah Wen
Objective tests
Advertising 5th Anusha Pandey
Business Communications 4th Vasudha Narayanan
Computer Problem Solving 2nd Roby Matta
CyberSecurity: 8th Sarah Wen
Economics 2nd Aahil Irfan, 1st Vidit Khandalia
Introduction to Business Concepts: 9th Kaushal Dabbiru, 4th Winston Zhou
Introduction to Information Technology: 9th Regan Hendrickson
Introduction to Marketing Concepts 9th Regan Hendrickson
Introduction to Parliamentary Procedure 3rd Alekhya Nidadavolu
Networking Infrastructure 3rd Rithvik Koppolu
Personal Finance 1st Vidit Khandalia
Securities and Ethics 5th Vidit Khandalia
UX Design 6th Achintya Agrawal, 4th Madeline Tsai, 1st Rohit Karthik
Phew! What a list!
2023 United States National Chemistry Olympiad
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.
2023 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
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!
2021-22 Awards
- LWSD Teen Startup Challenge
- US Innovator Challenge
- Wharton School of Business Global High School Investment Competition
- Tesla STEM Science Olympiad: Boyceville, Bird & Southern California Invitationals
- FBLA Regional Conference
- Tesla STEM High School 2022 Division B Science Olympiad Invitational
- 2022 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing
- WMEA All-State Honor Ensemble
- 2022 National History Day: Regional Competition
- 2022 USA Biology Olympiad
- Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision
- TSA: Washington State Competition
- 2022 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
- Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair
- 2022 Orca Bowl
- 2022 Washington Science Olympiad: Northwest Regional
- 2022 Washington State National History Day (NHD)
- 2022 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
- 2022 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair
- 2022 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
- 2022 Holocaust Center for Humanity
- Tesla STEM student named Seattle Youth Poet Laureate
- Seattle Times Features Tesla STEM Student work for Day of Remembrance
- 2022 USA Earth Sciences Olympiad
- 2022 Washington State Science Olympiad
- AYLUS President's Volunteer Service Award
- 2022 National Ocean Sciences Bowl
- 2022 National Science Olympiad
- 2022 National Science Bowl
- 2022 USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad
- 2022 US Physics Team
- 3rd Annual STEM Expo (2021-22)
LWSD Teen Startup Challenge
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
US Innovator Challenge
Wharton School of Business Global High School Investment Competition
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.
Tesla STEM Science Olympiad: Boyceville, Bird & Southern California Invitationals
Our Science Olympiad “Invitational Season” is winding down. In a few national-level competitions, our “Tesla STEM Green” team has finished:
- 7th (Boyceville, WI, out of 85 teams),
- 3rd (BirdSO, out of 159 teams), and
- 12th (Southern California, out of more than 250 teams);
Our Magenta and Blue teams did quite well, too.
FBLA Regional Conference
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 5th place
Broadcast Journalism: Omid Farahdel and Ani Seshadri 6th place
Business Management: Diya Karthic, Mehek Sathe, Nihan Tatli 3rd place; Eesha Kunisetty 2nd place
Data Analysis: Kavya Srikumar 2nd place
Digital Video Production: Kshitij Rao, Ani Seshardri, Rohan Sing 5th place
E-Business: Annie Adhikary 6th place; Omid Farahdel, Pranav Sayal, Brian Yin 4th place
Electronic Career Portfolio: Cindy Chen 2nd place
Entrepreneurship: Emma Shi, Osheen Tikku 3rd place
Graphic Design: Diya Karthic, Mehek Sathe, Nihan Tatli 6th place; Kshitij Rao, Manovay Sharma, Ayush Singh 5th place
International Business: Divij Aswinkumar, Farzad hasan 5th place
Introduction to Business Presentation: Vasudah Narayanan, Anjana Punniamoorthy 5th place; Prakshi Shukla, Nikki Taleghani 3rd place
Introduction to Public Speaking: Nitya Kakulamarri 6th place; Annie Adhikary 4th place, Anshu Aggarwal 3rd place
Introduction to Social Media Strategy: Abhinav Nadupalli, Alekhya Nidadavolu 6th place; Ahanya John, Megha Ramachandran, Alexa Rorrer 5th place
Job Interview: Eesha Kunisetty 2nd place
Marketing: Rishi Dilip, Aahil Irfan, Sourish Singh 6th place; Shivani Godse, Sneha Murali 5th place
Public Service Announcement: Gayathri Pillai, Shivani Sama, Shriya Tiku 2nd place; Sarah Wen 1st place
Public Speaking: Nikki Taleghani 2nd place
Publication Design: Aaryan Bondre, Tanush Contractor, Gyan Dave 4th place
Sales Presentation: Rhea Kuppa, Shreya Pandey 5th place; Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti 4th place; Divij Aswinkumar, Saathvik Somujayabalan, Harini Vijeyanandh 3rd place
Social Media Strategies: Cindy Chen, Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti 3rd place; Gauri Raman, Divya Singh 1st place
Sports and Entertainment Management: Gyan Dave, Aarav Khanna, Isayiah Lim 4th place
Website Design: Kohki Kita 3rd place
Objective tests
Accounting I: Kohki Kita
Advertising: Hrudai Thungathurthi 5th place; Sneha Murali 4th place
Agribusiness: Katelyn Ye 1st place (from LWHS but part of our chapter)
Computer Problem Solving: Keshav Acharya 5th place, Michael Yu 4th place, Rohit Karthik 1st place
Cybersecurity: Michael Yu 3rd place
Economics: Isayiah Lim 5th place
Human Resource Management: Felix Hallmann 4th place; Eesha Kunissetty 3rd place
Introduction to Business Communication: Vasudha Narayanan 1st place
Introduction to Financial Math: Divya Ramu 6th place; Johan Karukayil 5th place
Introduction to Information Technology: Johan Karukayil
Journalism: Shriya Tiku 6th place
Network Infrastructures: John Karaca 5th place; Michael Yu 3rd place
Organizational Leadership: Isha Rajpul 5th place
UX Design: Kohki Kita 4th place
Tesla STEM High School 2022 Division B Science Olympiad Invitational
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.
2022 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing
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.
WMEA All-State Honor Ensemble
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
2022 National History Day: Regional Competition
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 1st or 2nd 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 (2nd 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. (1st Place)
Druhin Bhowal, Senior Individual Documentary: Shattered Land: How Diplomacy, Debate, and the Round Table Conferences Shaped the Fate of India 1930-1932.(2nd 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. (2nd Place)
2022 USA Biology Olympiad
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
Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision
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
TSA: Washington State Competition
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.
2022 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
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!
Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair
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
1st 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
4th place: Praharsha Manda, Development of the Education Implicit Association Test (IAT)
Biomedical Engineering and Translational Health
1st 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
2nd 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
1st 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
3rd 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
2022 Orca Bowl
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!
2022 Washington Science Olympiad: Northwest Regional
On Saturday 5 March, 36 teams participated in the Northwest Regional of the Washington Science Olympiad, with great results:
- Tesla STEM Green finished in 2nd place (behind Bothell Blue) and qualified for the State Championship.
- Tesla STEM Magenta finished in 6th place (behind Bothell White) and also qualified for the State Championship.
- Tesla STEM Blue finished in 18th 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, 7th (Green)
Astronomy: Harish Krishnakumar & Evan Kim, 1st (Green)
Cell Biology: Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 1st (Green); Shuhui Yang & Sahaana Sridhar, 7th (Blue)
Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1st (Green)
Code Analysis: Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth, 3rd (Green); Matthew Lam & Farzad Hasan, 6th (Magenta)
Codebusters: Annanya Unnikrishnan, Ananya Soni & Matthew Lam, 8th (Magenta)
Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Farzad Hasan, 2nd (Magenta)
Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Maxwell Soh, 2nd (Green), Eva Jain & Krish Katre, 8th (Magenta)
Dynamic Planet: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1st (Green); Ashwin Kaliyaperumal, 6th (Blue); Matthew Lam & Ethan Liao, 8th (Magenta)
Environmental Chemistry: Yuchen Li & Sebi Kumar, 1st (Green); Prerana Kota & Siddhant Porwal, 7th (Magenta)
Experimental Design: Anjali Sreenivas, Aayush Sheth & Harish Krishnakumar, 3rd (Green)
Forensics: Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1st (Green); Prerana Kota & Ananya Soni, 6th (Magenta)
Green Generation: Divij Aswinkumar & Prerana Kota, 1st (Magenta); Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 2nd (Green)
It’s About Time: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 5th (Green)
Ornithology: Katya Rukhlinskaya & Shuhui Yang, 5th (Blue), Vidit Khandelia & Matthew Lam, 8th (Magenta)
Remote Sensing: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 2nd (Green)
Rocks & Minerals: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1st (Green)
Trajectory: Siddhant Porwal & Abhiram Yakkali, 2nd (Magenta); Katie Chan & Shivank Dutt, 6th (Green)
WiFi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 2nd (Green); Eva Jain & Vidit Khandelia, 6th (Magenta)
Wright Stuff: Marcin Anforowicz & Abhiram Yakkali, 3rd (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.
2022 Washington State National History Day (NHD)
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
1st 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,
3rd place
Title of his Paper: Lines in the Sand; Failures and Consequences of the Partition of the Ottoman Empire
Senior Individual Documentary: Druhin Bhowal,
7th 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.
2022 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
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)
2022 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair
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
- 1st 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
- 2nd 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 2nd 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
- 2nd 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
- 2nd 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
- 2nd 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 2nd 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
- 2nd 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
- 2nd 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
- 3rd 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
- 2nd 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 2nd 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
- 2nd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division
Laya Nair, Parkinson’s Disease: A Risk Prediction Model Using Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- 2nd 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
- 2nd place in Behavioral and Social Sciences category, Senior Division
Gauri Raman, Using Bright Light Therapy to Effectively Treat Night Eating Syndrome
- 3rd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division
Vijaya Sripada, Using Various Inputs of Smell to Reduce Depression Score in Alzheimer Patients
- 2nd place in Behavioral and Social Science category, Senior Division
Keshav Acharya, The Relevance of Learning Styles in Problem-based Learning
- 2nd 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
2022 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF)
2022 Holocaust Center for Humanity
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!
Tesla STEM student named Seattle Youth Poet Laureate
From Mr. Andrew Ivy:
I want to take a moment and let you know that Adhya Kona, an 11th 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.
Seattle Times Features Tesla STEM Student work for Day of Remembrance
2022 USA Earth Sciences Olympiad
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.
2022 Washington State Science Olympiad
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 1st 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 7th 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 1st 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, 1st (Green), Harish Krishnakumar & Annanya Unnikrishnan, 4th (Magenta)
Bridge: Marcin Anforowicz & Abhiram Yakkali, 4th (Magenta)
Cell Biology: Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 1st (Green)
Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Sami Badal Khan, 1st (Green)
Code Analysis: Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth, 3rd (Green)
Codebusters: Phillip Araujo, Aayush Sheth & Olivia Wang, 3rd (Green)
Detector Building: Divij Aswinkumar & Tejas Pakalapati, 5th (Magenta),
Disease Detectives: Anjali Sreenivas & Maxwell Soh, 1st (Green)
Dynamic Planet: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1st (Green)
Environmental Chemistry: Yuchen Li & Sebi Kumar, 1st (Green)
Experimental Design: Siddhant Porwal, Anjali Sreenivas & Aayush Sheth, 2nd (Green)
Forensics: Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 1st (Green)
Gravity Vehicle: Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 5th (Green)
Green Generation: Rohan Iyer & Maxwell Soh, 2nd (Green)
Ornithology: Rohan Iyer & Olivia Wang, 5th (Green)
Remote Sensing: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1st (Green)
Rocks & Minerals: Yuchen Li & Aashray, 1st (Green)
Trajectory: Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 3rd (Green)
WiFi Lab: Sami Badal Khan & Evan Kim, 1st (Green)
Write It CAD It: Phillip Araujo & Katie Chan, 2nd (Green)
Tesla STEM SciOly has only existed for 3 years. To go from nothing (well COVID) in Year 1, to 3rd place in Washington State in Year 2, to 1st 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.
AYLUS President's Volunteer Service Award
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.
2022 National Ocean Sciences Bowl
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.
2022 National Science Olympiad
This year, Tesla STEM qualified for the National Science Olympiad for the first time by finishing 1st 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 24th. Please congratulate the following ten groups who placed in the top 15 in the nation in their events:
Astronomy: Evan Kim & Yuchen Li, 12th
Chemistry Lab: Sebi Kumar & Yuchen Li, 15th
Dynamic Planet: Aashray & Yuchen Li, 1st
Forensics: Rithani Saravanakumar & Anjali Sreenivas, 10th
Remote Sensing: Aashray & Yuchen Li, 4th
Rocks and Minerals: Aashray & Yuchen Li, 1st
Trajectory: Farzad Hasan & Siddhant Porwal, 10th
Cybersecurity: Marcin Anforowicz & Aayush Sheth, 8th
Digital Structures: Marcin Anforowicz & Divij Aswinkumar 12th
Write It CAD It: Prerana Kota & Harish Krishnakumar, 10th
2022 National Science Bowl
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.
2022 USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad
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 9th in the nation on the NAC and will represent the US as part of the guest team at the 15th IOAA in Kutaisi, Georgia.
2022 US Physics Team
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!
3rd Annual STEM Expo (2021-22)
From Ms. Belle Bonomo:
Last week, we hosted the 3rd 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
- 1st Place: Anya Vaish - Bioinformatic Analysis to Find a Universal Sequence from SARS-CoV-2 Genomes for the Potential Development of a Pancoronavirus Vaccine
- 2nd Place: Cindy Chen - Facial and Emotional Recognition Among Caucasian and East Asian Adolescents
- 3rd Place: Laya Nair - Parkinson's Disease: A Risk Prediction Model Using Inflammatory Bowel Disease
2020-21 Awards
- Wharton School of Business Global High School Investment Competition
- 2020 MIT Science Bowl
- Science Olympiad: Four 1st Semester Invitationals (UGASO, Camas, SOLVI, UCSO)
- 2021 USA Biology Olympiad (USABO)
- 2021 American Mathematics Competition (AMC)
- 2021 ORCA Bowl
- 2021 USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad
- 2021 Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair (CSRSEF)
- 2021 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF)
- BRAIN Initiative Challenge
- Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision
- 2021 HOSA State Leadership Conference
- 2021 Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) State Leadership Conference
- 2021 National Ocean Sciences Bowl
- USA Physics Olympic Team
- 2021 National Personal Finance Challenge
- 2021 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
- 2021 Washington Science Olympiad: Regional Tournament
- Washington Science Olympiad: State Tournament
- 2021 FBLA Nationals
Wharton School of Business Global High School Investment Competition
Finals:
Avant-Garde Investments, from Tesla STEM High School, placed 3rd 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 9th 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.
2020 MIT Science Bowl
Please congratulate our Science Bowl team—Yuchen Li, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Saketh Dhulipalla, and Sami Badal Khan—for their 4th 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.
Science Olympiad: Four 1st Semester Invitationals (UGASO, Camas, SOLVI, UCSO)
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 2nd place, Team Magenta earned 31st place, and Team Blue earned 44th place.
- Camas SciOly Invitational: Tesla STEM’s “Model S” team won 1st 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 6th place and the “Model Y” team earned 18th place, which shows encouraging depth!
- Science Olympiad Las Vegas Invitational (SOLVI): Tesla STEM Team Green placed 6th 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 6th!). Tesla STEM had several Top 10 finishes, listed below.
- University of Chicago Science Olympiad (UCSO): Tesla STEM Team Green won 2nd 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: 6th place, Rohan Iyer & Anjali Sreenivas
Astronomy: 1st place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li
Chem Lab: 5th place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Yuchen Li
Circuit Lab: 3rd place, Evan Kim & Aayush Sheth
Codebusters: 8th place, Aayush Sheth, Phillip Araujo & Sahith Gorty
Designer Genes: 3rd place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer
Disease Detectives: 3rd place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas
Dynamic Planet: 2nd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Fossils: 3rd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Machines: 6th place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad
Ornithology: 6th place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer
Protein Modeling: 3rd place, Rohan Iyer, Saketh Dhulipalla & Maxwell Soh
Sounds of Music: 4th place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo
Water Quality: 7th place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta
Camas SciOly Invitational (12 December 2020):
Team Model S: 1st place; Team Cybertruck: 6th place; Team Model Y: 18th place
Anatomy & Physiology: 1st place, Rohan Iyer & Anjali Sreenivas
Astronomy: 3rd place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li
Chem Lab: 1st place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sami Badal Khan
Circuit Lab: 2nd place, Sami Badal Khan & Aaditya Prasad
Code Analysis: 3rd place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta
Codebusters: 3rd place, Aayush Sheth, Phillip Araujo, & Sahith Gorty
Designer Genes: 1st place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer
Detector Building: 4th place, Sami Badal Khan & Aayush Sheth
Digital Structures: 6th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Evan Li; 3rd place, Neha Madanagopal
Disease Detectives: 1st place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas
Dynamic Planet: 1st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Environmental Chemistry: 1st place, Yuchen Li & Saketh Dhulipalla
Experimental Design: 5th place, Anjali Sreenivas, Aayush Sheth, & Aaditya Prasad
Forensics: 5th place, Harish Krishnakumar & Navaneet Girikumar; 2nd place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sahith Gorty
Fossils: 5th place, Ethan Liao & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 2nd place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
GeoLogic Mapping: 1st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Machines: 6th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 1st place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad
Ornithology: 4th place, Nikhil Mehta & Matthew Lam
Sounds of Music: 1st place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo
Water Quality: 1st place, Maxwell Soh & Nikhil Mehta
Science Olympiad Las Vegas Invitational (SOLVI) (19 December 2020):
Astronomy: 1st place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li
Designer Genes: 5th place, Nikhil Mehta & Rohan Iyer
Disease Detectives: 5th place, Maxwell Soh & Anjali Sreenivas
Dynamic Planet: 4th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Machines: 2nd place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad
University of Chicago Science Olympiad (UCSO) (16 January 2021):
Team Green: 2nd place
Astronomy: 3rd place, Evan Kim & Yuchen Li
Codebusters: 8th place, Aayush Sheth & Phillip Araujo
Designer Genes: 6th place, Rohan Iyer & Nikhil Mehta
Dynamic Planet: 1st place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Experimental Design: 2nd place, Aaditya Prasad & Aayush Sheth
Forensics: 7th place, Saketh Dhulipalla & Sahith Gorty
Fossils: 10th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Geologic Mapping: 6th place, Yuchen Li & Atharv Dixit
Machines: 9th place, Divij Aswinkumar & Saathvik Somujayabalan; 2nd place, Evan Kim & Aaditya Prasad
Ornithology: 4th place, Nikhil Mehta & Matthew Lam
Protein Modelling: 8th place, Rohan Iyer & Saketh Dhulipalla
Sounds of Music: 6th place, Evan Kim & Phillip Araujo
2021 USA Biology Olympiad (USABO)
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
2021 American Mathematics Competition (AMC)
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
2021 ORCA Bowl
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 11th 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.
2021 USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad
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.
2021 Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair (CSRSEF)
2021 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF)
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
- 1st 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.
BRAIN Initiative Challenge
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 – 3rd place video for “Brain Computer Interfaces”
- Suhani Arora – Honorable Mention essay for “Should DBS be performed knowing it can cause personality change?”
Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision
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”
2021 HOSA State Leadership Conference
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 13th-19th):
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 23rd. The fourth place ranking still has a chance of attending depending on ranking 1-3 participation.
2021 Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) State Leadership Conference
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 8th place
Advertising: Edward Zhou 1st place
Banking and Financial Systems: Team of Divij Aswinkumar and Farzad Hasan 6th place
Broadcast Journalism: Team of Monisha Krothapalli and Shreya Pandey 1st place
Business Communiction: Siddhant Porwal 7th place
Business Ethics: Team of Laura Anker and Uma Paul, 7th place; Team of Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar 3rd place
Business Financial Plan: Prakriti Shukla and Prakshi Shukla 5th place
Computer Problem Solving: Nidhi Munikote 2nd place
Digital Video Production: Team of Radhika Sikaria and Rohan Singh 4th; Team of Vani Daryani, Ateeq Ramlan and Leo Ribeiro di Brito 7th place
E-business: Leo Ribeiro de Brito 5th place
Economics: Shivank Dutt 7th place
Entrepreneurship: Team of Shivank Dutt and Aatish Parson 2nd place; Team of Ryan Chan, Mohammad Mendahawi and Cameron Yetzer 1st place
Graphic Design: Mikey Halim 3rd place; Edward Zhou 2nd place
Hospitality Management: Navaneet Girikumar 4th place; Team of Vani Daryani and Ananya Krishnan 6th place; Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku 5th place
Impromptu Speaking: Mikey Halim 3rd place
International Business: Team of Ryan Chan, Mohammad Mendahawi and Cameron Yetzer 1st place; Team of Uma Paul and Emma Shi 2nd place
Introduction to Business Communication: Sneha Murali 2nd place, Ananya Unnikrishnan 1st place
Introduction to Business Presentation: Team of Aymaan Hussain and Isayiah Lim 9th place; team of Karina Kejriwal, Bhavya Nandikanti and Divya Singh 4th place
Introduction to Business Procedures: Sneha Murali 2nd place
Introduction to FBLA: Isayiah Lim 2nd place
Introduction to Financial Math: Keshav Acharya 3rd place; Sneha Murali 4th place
Introduction to Information Technology: Rohit Karthik 4th place
Introduction to Public Speaking: Cindy Chen 1st place, Harini Vijeyanandh 6th place
Introduction to Social Media Strategy: Team of Ansh Aggarwal, Varsha Mantravadi and Prakshi Shukla 4th place
Job Interview: Eesha Kunisetty 4th place; Nitya Kakulamarri 3rd place
Management Decision Making: Team of Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul 4th place
Mobile Application Development: Team of Aheli Dutta, Aatish Parson and Barath Saravanan 1st place
Parliamentary Procedure: Team of Siddhant Porwal, Gauri Raman, Arihant Singh and Pranav Teegavarapu 3rd place
Personal Finance: Deepesh Singh 4th place
Publication Design: Team of Siddhant Porwal and Harini Vijeyanandh 10th place; Team of Karina Kejriwal and Divya Singh 8th place
Sales Presentation: Team of Karina Kejriwal and Rhea Kuppa 4th place
Securities and Investments: John Karaca 3rd place
Social Media Strategies: Team of Aheli Dutta and Barath Saravanan 2nd place
Supply Chain Management: Mohit Soni 5th place
2021 National Ocean Sciences Bowl
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.
USA Physics Olympic Team
2021 National Personal Finance Challenge
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 1st and 2nd 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 1st Place
Aayush Sheth 2nd 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.
2021 Pacific Northwest Regional Science Bowl
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!
2021 Washington Science Olympiad: Regional Tournament
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.
Washington Science Olympiad: State Tournament
2021 FBLA Nationals
2019-20 Awards
- 2020 TSA State Conference
- National History Bee and Bowl
- Future Business Leaders of America Region Winter Conference
- 2020 Wash. State Science & Engineering Fair
- 2020 Future Business Leaders of America State Leadership Conference
- 2020 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl
- 2020 USA Biology Olympiad
- 2020 National History Day
- 2020 FBLA State Conference
- 2020 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
- 2020 Congressional Art Competition
- 2020 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing
- 2020 National Science Bowl
- 2020 FBLA Nationals
- 2020 Holocaust Center for Humanity Contest
2020 TSA State Conference
Our Tesla STEM scholars showed their resilience by participating in the TSA State Conference, held remotely on March 19 and 20th. 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
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
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
National History Bee and Bowl
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.
Future Business Leaders of America Region Winter Conference
Personal Finance: 1st Place - Edward Zhou
Political Science: 1st Place - Deepayan Sanyal;
2nd Place - Alex Leu,
Securities and Investments: 1st place Pinakin Kanade;
2nd Place - Deepayan Sanyal
Public Speaking: 5th Place - Nathan Apfel
Hospitality Management: 2nd Place - Team of Atharv Dixit and Navaneet Girikumar
3rd Place - Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku
Electronic Career Portfolio: 5th Place - Tejas Sudhakar
Emerging Business Issues: 2nd Place - Team Claire Yang, Shrey Srivastava and An Doan;
4th Place - Uma Paul
Management Information Systems: 1st Place - Maxwell Wang and Brian Yao;
3rd Place - Vidyut Baskar, Rohit Gupta and Nihal Thomas;
4th Place - Team of Emma Shi and Osheen Tikku
Sales Presentation: 5th Place - Emma Shi
Marketing: 5th Place - Alex Leu;
6th Place - Deveshi Thaku;
Client Service: 1st Place - Claire Yang;
2nd Place - Mihika Vankamamidi
4th Place - Spring Chenjp;
5th Place - Ajay Rajasekaran
Public Service Announcement: 3rd Place - Syed Aamir, Vinayak Ajmera and Azhan Zaheer;
5th Place - Varun Wescott and Parum Misri;
6th Place - Isaac Yun, Emily Zhao and Hanara Nam
Introduction to Public Speaking: 1st Place - Cindy Chen;
5th Place - Ananya Krishnan
E-Business: 2nd Place - Nihal Thomas, Saanav Somani and Mikey Halim
Management Decision Making: 1st Place - Siddharth Shende;
2nd Place - Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul; 5th Place - Archit Patankar
Job Interview: 1st Place - Prakriti Shukla;
6th Place - Anya Vaish
Entrepreneurship: 1st Place - Siddharth Shende;
5th Place - Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy;
6th Place - Jessica Singh
Publication Design: 5th Place - Team of Deveshi Thakur, Emily Zhao and Neerja Natu
Digital Video Production: 1st Place - Prakriti Shukla and Charlotte Conze;
2nd Place - Parum Misri, Varun Wescott and Aditya Gottumukkala;
5th Place - Jasarjan Singh and Kion Bidari
Introduction to Business Presentation: 4th Place - Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar;
5th Place - Ann Baturytski and Cici Ao
Global Business: 2nd Place - Maxwell Wang
Website Design: 3rd Place - Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy and Shrey Srivastava;
5th Place - Sophia Ling and Kinner Parikh
Social Media Campaign: 2nd Place - Aditya Gottumukkala, Samarjit Kaushik and Saanav Somani;
6th Place - Anisha Karnik, Alexa Wirth and Prakriti Shukla
Impromptu Speaking: 1st Place - Siddharth Shende;
2nd Place - Maxwell Wang;
5th Place - Spring Chenjp
Graphic Design: 3rd Place - Mikey Halim and Akshay Murthy;
5th Place - Karina Kejriwal, Divya Singh and Ameya Madhugiri
Word Processing: 3rd Place - Supriya Baskar
Advertising: 3rd Place - Akshay Murthy;
5th Place - Monisha Krothapalli
Business Calculations: 5th Place - Hrudai Thungathurthi
Business Communication: 2nd Place - Abhinav Diddee
Business Law: 1st Place - Deepayan Sanyal;
2nd Place - Tejas Sudhakar;
6th Place - Nihal Thomas
Computer Problem Solving: 2nd Place - Michael Yu;
4th Place - Kinner Parikh;
5th Place - Anagha Polapragada
Cyber Security: 1st Place - Michael Yu;
4th Place - Mihika Vankamamidi;
6th Place - Anagha Polapragada
Economics: 2nd Place - Deepayan Sanyal;
3rd Place - Uma Paul;
6th Place - Boaz Wu
Healthcare Administration: 2nd Place - Rohit Gupta
Introduction to Business: 1st Place - Edward Zhou;
3rd Place - Monisha Krothapalli
Introduction to Business Communication: 6th Place - Osheen Tikku
Introduction to FBLA: 5th Place - Esha Bangur
Introduction to Financial Math: 3rd Place - Siddhant Porwal;
6th Place - Arihant Singh
Introduction to Information Technology: 1st Place - Michael Yu;
2nd Place - Edward Zhou
Journalism: 3rd Place - Nathan Apfel
Organizational Leadership: 3rd Place – Vani Daryani;
4th Place - Anagha Polapragada;
6th Place - Supriya Baskar
Parliamentary Procedure: 1st Place - Team of Oleg Ianchenko, An Doan, Nathan Apfel, Spring Chenjp;
2nd Place - Team of Deveshi Thakur, Emily Zhao, Jessica Singh, Keerthana Pilla
2020 Wash. State Science & Engineering Fair
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 🙂
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.
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
2020 Future Business Leaders of America State Leadership Conference
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: 10th Supriya Baskar, 9th Alex Liu, 4th Monisha Krothapalli, 3rd Akshay Murthy
Business Law: 4th Nihal Thomas, 2nd Tejas Sudhakar, 1st Deepayan Sanyal
Economics: 1st Deepayan Sanyal
Healthcare Administration: 2nd Spring Chenjp
Intro to Business: 6th Eddie Zhou,
Intro to Business Communication: 9th Anya Vaish
Intro to Financial Math: 3rd Arihant Singh
Intro to Information Technology: 10th Harish Krishnakumar, 9th Eddie Zhou, 3rd Siddhant Porwal
Journalism: 10th Nathan Apfel
Organizational Leadership: 8th Aran Punniamoorthy
Personal Finance: 10th Shrey Srivastava; 8th Eddie Zhou, 1st Deepayan Sanyal
Securities and Investments: 3rd Pinakin Kanade, 2nd Deepayan Sanyal
2020 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl
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 2 (Sami Badal Khan, Nakul Rajpal, Ananya Soni, and Danyuan Wang) came in tied for 9th place.
Team 1 (Saketh Dhulipalla, Rohan Iyer, Evan Kim, Yuchen Li, and Vedantha Venkatapathy) came in 1st 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.
Congratulations to all of these students.
Andy Christensen
2020 USA Biology Olympiad
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.
2020 National History Day
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.
2020 FBLA State Conference
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:
6th place Charlotte Conze, Ria Rajan and Prakriti Shukla
Client Service:
9th place Claire Yang,
7th place Mihika Vankamamidi,
1st place Spring Chenjp
Business Plan:
4th place Rohit Gupta, Eric Song, Nihal Thomas
Business Financial Plan:
2nd place Mikey Halim and Varun Wescott
Website Design:
4th place Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy, Shrey Srivastava
Social Media Campaign:
8th place Aheli Dutta and Aran Punniamoorthy,
6th place Anisha Karnik, Prakriti Shukla and Alexa Wirth,
3rd place Adi Gottumukkala, Samarjit Kaushik and Saanav Somani
Public Service Announcement:
10th Tobia Kim, Hanara Nam and Isaac Yun,
5th place Syed Aamir, Vinayak Ajmera, and Azhan Zaheer,
4th place Charlotte Conze, Ria Rajan
Introduction to Business Presentation:
6th place Cici Ao, Ann Baturytsi, Aheli Dutta,
3rd place Cindy Chen and Kavya Srikumar
Graphic Design:
7th place Karina Kejriwal, Ameya Madhugiri and Arihant Singh,
2nd place Mikey Halim and Akshay Murthy
Emerging Business Issues:
6th place An Doan, Shrey Srivastava and Claire Yang,
5th place Uma Paul
Electronic Career Portfolio: 8th place Harish Krishnakumar
Computer Applications and Simulation Programming: 8th place Abhinav Diddee, Viraj Goyal and Deepayan Sanyal
E-Business 1st place Mikey Halim, Sanaav Somani, and Nihal Thomas
Entrepreneurship: 3rd place Oleg Ianchenko, Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy
Global Business: 2nd place Maxwell Wang
Hospitality Mgt. 4th place Eesha Kunisetty and Emma Shi
Management Decision Making:
8th place Eesha Kunisetty and Uma Paul,
6th place Archit Patankar,
4th place Oleg Ianchenko, Pinakin Kanade and Aran Punniamoorthy
Management Information Systems:
4th place Uma Paul and Emma Shi,
1st place Maxwell Wang and Brian Yao
Marketing: 2nd place Alex Liu
Mobile App Development:
8th place Sahil Kancherla and Samarjit Kaushik,
4th place Henry Liao and George Zhang
Parli Pro:
10th place Eesha Kunisetty, Keerthana Pilla, Divya Singh and Emily Zhao,
1st place Nathan Apfel, Spring Chenjp, An Doan and Oleg Ianchenko
2020 ArcGIS Washington State Map Story Contest
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
https://teslahs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=d408e68a6b7f4987bdd3186adf1ec0f1
2020 Congressional Art Competition
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.
2020 NCWIT Awards for Aspirations in Computing
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.
2020 National Science Bowl
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!
2020 FBLA Nationals
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.
2020 Holocaust Center for Humanity Contest
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 – 1st place
George Zhang – 2nd place
Josh Venable – 3rd place (tied)
Honorable Mention – Spring Chenjp
Film:
Parum Misri – 2nd place
Eli Trepte – 3rd place
Art:
Zahra Merchant – 2nd 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
Civics
Tesla STEM High School
2018-19 Awards
- 2019 Washington State ArcGis Winners
- 2019 Hunt the Wumpus results
- 2019 English Awards
- 2019 National History Day
- 2019 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl
- 2019 FBLA State results
- 2019 Wash. State Science & Engineering Fair (WSSEF)
- 2019 NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing
- 2019 Tech. Student Association (TSA) Results
- 2019 Knowledge Bowl
- 2019 Central Sound (CSFSEF) Award
- 2019 Biology Olympiad Open Exam
- 2019 HOSA State Leadership Conference
- 2019 Model UN
- 2019 History Day
2019 Washington State ArcGis Winners
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 |
||
The State of Seattle's Homeless Population |
Daniel Rashevsky |
||
Salmon: The Indicators of the Environment |
William Erignac |
Theo Devant |
|
Pacific County Shellfish |
Rishika Veeramachaneni |
Minu Padhye |
|
Yakama Tribe |
Tichada Tantasirikorn |
Qing Hui Xie |
2019 Hunt the Wumpus results
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.
- Student Choice Award (“Sytax Errors”): Noah Charleson-Sterritt, Michael Halim, Pinakin Kanade, Samarjit Kaushik, Aran Punniamoorthy
- 2nd Runner Up (“How to Train Your Viddy”): Kishan Balaga, Viddy Baskar, Gabe Ervin, Yukito Shida, Jack Tribolet, Shaurya Vashisth
- 3rd Runner Up (“Artesian Code”): Sihajveer Gulati, Hans Koduri, Daniel Popa, Raj Sunku, Joshua Venable, Brian Yang
- 2nd Place, Innovation (“Oh, No!”): Kion Bidari, Brayden Brackett, Kinner Parikh, Archit Patankar, Varun Wescott, Azhan Zaheer
- 1st Place, Implementation (“Faze Clans”): Viraj Goyal, Raymond Guo, Sahil Kancherla, Nadav Levanoni, Lucian Petriuc, Niranjan Sahi
2019 English Awards
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:
3rd place: Annie Denton
Honorable mention: Max Reisman
2nd place: Lina Chau
3rd place: Elisabeth Berger
Honorable Mention: Esther Wang
Jenai Sheffels
Honors English 10
AP Language & Composition
2019 National History Day
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.
2019 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl
Our Science Bowl team took 3rd place at the 2019 Pacific Northwest Regional High School Science Bowl. The team was comprised of
Vedantha Venkatapathy (11th)
Yuchen Li (9th)
Saketh Dhulipalla (9th)
Samarjit Kaushik (10th)
Maxwell Soh (9th)
2019 FBLA State results
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 3rd place
Business Law – Siddharth Shende 2nd place
Computer Problem Solving – Pinakin Kanade 10th, Varun Sridhar 6th
Cybersecurity – Varun Sridhar 1st
Introduction to Financial Math – Jennifer Hu 4th
Journalism – Ritika Iyer 1st
Organizational Leadership – George Zhang 2nd
Securities and Investments – Deepayan Sanyal
Broadcast Journalism – team of Anika Ghelani and Isha Murali 7th
Business Ethics team of Pinakin Kanade, Saanav Somani, Claire Yang 2nd
Business Financial Plan – team of Sophia Ling, Aran Punnamoorthy, Nihal Thomas 9th; team of Oleg Ianchenko, Shrey Shrivastava and Varun Wescott 6th
Business Plan – team of Surya Gorantla, Graham Sabin and Amar Sood 4th
Coding and Programming – Henry Liao 2nd, Rishika Veeramachaneni, 1st
Computer Game and Simulation Programming – team of Shrey Shrivastava, Deepayan Sanyal, Varun Wescott 4th
Digital Video Production – team of Anika Ghelani, Iman Khatri, QingHui Xie 10th, team of Adi Gottamukkala, Nihal Thomas, Mikey Halim 7th
E-Business – team of Akshay Murthy, Siddharth Shende, Maxwell Wang 1st
Entrepreneurship – Siddharth Shende 2nd
Impromptu Speaking – Siddharth Shende 2nd; Zofia Kierner 5th
Introduction to Business Presentation – team of An Doan, Claire Yang, Mihika Vankamamidi 6th
Introduction to Public Speaking – Mikey Halim 5th
Job Interview – Ritika Iyer 1st, Zofia Kierner 3rd
Management Decision Making – team of Eesha Kunisetty and Jennifer Hu 5th; Samarjit Kaushik 2nd
Management Information Systems – team of Graham Sabin and Maxwell Wang 1st
Public Service Announcement – team of Sahil Kancherla, Parum Misri and Varun Wescott 1st
Publication Design – team of Akshay Murthy and Ritika Iyer 1st, team of Neerja Natu, Emily Zhao and Deveshi Thakur 9th
Sales Presentation – Zofia Kierner 4th
Word Processing – QingHui Xie 7th
2019 Wash. State Science & Engineering Fair (WSSEF)
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
- 1st place in Microbiology Category, Senior Division
Nina Gupta, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Home Pregnancy Test to Detect Early Stages of Ovarian Cancer in Postmenopausal Women
- 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
- 2nd place place in Cellular and Molecular Biology Category, Senior Division
- National Oceanic $ Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) special category award, $75
- American Psychological Association special category Award
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 2nd place in Environmental Engineering category, Senior Division
- US Army special category award in life sciences special category award
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 1st place in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category, Senior Division
- Normal E Borlaug Excellence in Sustainability Award, $100
- Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
2019 NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing
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.
- 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
2019 Tech. Student Association (TSA) Results
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: 4th place- Team of Shubhu Purohit, Aditya Balasubramanian, Rohan Anand, Yash Kulkarni, Aakash Ramachandran
Children’s Stories 4th place: QingHui Xie, Annie Denton
CAD 3D Engineering 3rd place Maxwell Wang
Engineering Design 3rd place-Team of Kevin Yap, Laila Kuhn, Rudy Banjeree, Annie Denton
2nd place-Team of Dharini Sribalaskandarajah, Sashu Shankar and Ila Sharma
1st place-Team of Jakob Bjorner, Devesh Sarda, Anirudh Iyer, Sebastian Wick and Mathias Foster
Fashion Design 2nd place-Team of Tichada Tantasirikorn and Annie Denton
Future Technology Teacher 1st place Samarjit Kaushik
Music Production 4th place-Amrutha Srikanth and Rachel Alwin
Robotics Challenge 2nd place Team of Brian Yao and Aakash Ramachandran
Software Development 3rd place Team of Aakash Ramachandran, Surya Gorantla, Varun Venkatesh, Aditi Balasubramanian, Devesh Sarda and Pranav Sukumar
Structural Engineering 3rd place-Team of Lahari Nidadavolu and Jakob Bjorner
Webmaster 4th place-Team of Mathias Foster, Akshay Murthy, Tristan Stevens, Ranveer Thind
Coding 4th place-Maxwell Wang
Extemporaneous Speech 4th place-Ranveer Thind
Technology Problem Solving 1st place-Team of Tristan Stevens and Maxwell Wang
VEX Robotics 2nd place-Team of Tristan Stevens, Mathias Foster and Maxwell Wang
1st 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.
2019 Knowledge Bowl
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 2nd place out of 18 teams! This is Tesla’s first year competing in knowledge bowl and the team in 1st 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.
- Yuchen Li (captain)
- Matthew Lam
- Maxwell Soh
- Saketh Dhulipalla
- Atharv Dixit
2019 Central Sound (CSFSEF) Award
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.
2019 Biology Olympiad Open Exam
2019 HOSA State Leadership Conference
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.
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
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
Meg Stockbridge PhD
Science Teacher
HOSA Advisor
2019 Model UN
The Tesla STEM Model United Nations club attended the annual Washington State Model United Nations Conference on March 2nd and 3rd, 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
2019 History Day
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 1st 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 1st 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
2017-18 Awards
- 2018 DECA Idea Challenge
- 2018 Summer Internships
- 2018 FBLA Nationals
- 2018 HOSA International Leadership Conference Results
- 2018 TSA Nationals
- 2018 Hunt the Wumpus @ Microsoft
- 2018 NWABR Bio Expo results
- 2018 Imagine Tomorrow results
- 2018 State FBLA Results (April)
- 2018 TSA Results
- 2018 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) Awards
- 2018 HOSA Results
- 2018 Central Sound CSREF Winners
- 2018 FBLA Regional results
2018 DECA Idea Challenge
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.
2018 Summer Internships
Check out what some of our STEM students did this summer at Cartogram in Seattle!
2018 FBLA Nationals
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
2018 HOSA International Leadership Conference Results
July 2, 2018
Hello All,
We just returned from Dallas, Tx today with our HOSA finalists from state.
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.
2018 TSA Nationals
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 9th place for Promotional Design
2018 Hunt the Wumpus @ Microsoft
June 8, 2018
Our students had a great showing at Hunt the Wumpus this year taking home 2 of 3 Runners-Up and 2nd 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.
- Maxwell Wong
- Siddharth Sherde
- Surya Gorantla
- Tony Li
- Arnav Sacheti
- Tristan Stevens
Team: Spice Girls – Runners Up
- Swararthmika Kakivaya
- Aryo Karai
- Archi Faugno
- Luca Chang
- Tiger McDaniel
- Eric Bethune
Team: Unicorn Ninjas - 2nd Place Best Implementation
- Rachel Alwan
- Pamela Cheema
- Roshni Srikanth
- Sowmya Pratipati
- Diya Basu
- Amrutha Srikanth
2018 NWABR Bio Expo results
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
- 1st place – Vaishnavi Phadnis and Rashida Hakim
- 3rd 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
- 2nd place – Anna Gimera and Donovan Hesselroth
2018 Imagine Tomorrow results
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 – 1st 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 – 1st 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
2018 State FBLA Results (April)
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 9th place
Broadcast Journalism: Team of Sonika Tayade and Amrita Narahasim 3rd place; team of Catherine Oei, Rayan Krishnan and Aaskash Ramachandran 5th place
Business Ethics: Team of Amrita Narahasim, Ila Sharma and Aashna Sheth 1st place
Business Financial Plan: Team of Rishi Kavikondala and Aashna Sheth 3rd place
Business Plan: Team of Sonika Tayade and Sashu Shankar 2nd place, team of Siddharth Shende and Caleb John 4th place
Coding and Programming: Maxwell Wang 1st place, Pranav Sukumar 3rd place
Cybersecurity: Pranav Sukumar 10th place
Database and Design: Rishi Kavikondala 5th place
Electronic Career Portfolio: Ritika Iyer 4th, Sonika Tayade 6th, Victoria Alkin 8th
Entrepreneurship: Siddharth Shinde 1st, team of Ranveer Thind, Rayan Krishnan and Aaskah Ramachandran 4th
Graphic Design: Team of Ritika Iyer and Akshay Murthy 1st, Andrew Nguyen 9th
Introduction to Business Presentation: Team of Mihika Vankamamidi, An Doan and Claire Yang 5th
Introduction to FBLA Procedures: Deveshi Thakar 1st place
Introduction to Public Speaking: Siddharth Shinde 8th place
Management Information Systems: Team of Ranveer Thind and Maxwell Wang 1st place
Marketing: Team of Sashu Shankar and Varun Vankatesh 1st place
Public Service Announcement: Team of Ranveer Thind and Aakash Ramachandran 1st place
Website Design: Team of Andrew Nguyen, Pranav Sukumar and Jack Tribolet 4th place
Word Processing: Ritika Iyer 7th place
We also received the Chapter Report Initiative Award
2018 TSA Results
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.
2018 Washington State Science and Engineering Fair (WSSEF) Awards
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
- 1st 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
- 1st 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
- 1st 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
2018 HOSA Results
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.
2018 Central Sound CSREF Winners
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.
2018 FBLA Regional results
2016-17 Awards
2017
- 2017 Imagine Tomorrow results
- 2017 Washington State Science & Engineering Fair (WSSEF) Awards
- 2017 FBLA State Conference Results
- 2017 FBLA Regional Conference Results
- 2017 TSA State Conference
- 2017 HOSA Results
- 2017 CSREF Results
- 2017 Model UN Results
- 2017 Congressional Apps Hackathon Challenge
- 2017 TSA Nationals
- 2017 FBLA Nationals
2017 Imagine Tomorrow results
Our Imagine Tomorrow students made us proud once again with their stellar performances at this weekend's competition in Pullman. We won three 1st Place Awards, two 2nd Place Awards, and the Best Teamwork Award.
Here are the details:
Challenge Topic 1: The Itron Food, Energy, and Water Challenge – Design Approach – 1stPlaceTitle: Halting Natural Gas Disasters with the Development of an Automated Safety Valve Through Fluid Dynamic Analysis
Team Members: Sashu Shankar, Rishi Kavikondala, Rayan Krishnan, Anne Lee, Isaac Perrin
Challenge Topic 1: The Itron Food, Energy, and Water Challenge – Behavior Approach – 1stPlace
Title: Schools Under 2° C
Team Members: Bryn Allesina-McGrory, Indra Toepke, Yogitha Sunkara, Adriana Rush
Challenge Topic 2: The Boeing Aerospace Challenge – Design Approach – 2nd Place and Best Teamwork Award
Title: Developing Solketal: Reducing Glycerol Waste Through Jet Fuel Additive
Team Members: Andrea Dang, Rashida Hakim, George Cheruvathur, Sandra Militaru
Challenge Topic 3: The Biofuels Challenge – Technology Approach – 1st Place
Title: The Application of the Triazabicyclodecene Catalyst to the Transesterification Process in Biofuels Production
Team Members: Lawrence Atienza, Neha Nagvekar, Fred Qin, Larry Wang
Challenge Topic 3: The Biofuels Challenge – Design Approach – 2nd Place
Title: Application of Optical Fiber Cables Within Algal Photobioreactors for Augmented Productivity and Scalability
Team Members: Abhijith Balijepalli, Tyler Volta, Rusdan Crook, Ryan Koshy
2017 Washington State Science & Engineering Fair (WSSEF) Awards
Our kids rock. Not only did we have one of our esteemed students take home the GRAND PRIZE winner of the whole fair, but we got two additional bids to ISEF, so now we have a record 3 student projects going to Los Angles for the International Science and Engineering Fair in just a few weeks. I don’t know if we will ever be able to replicate this success again. Of the 7 available spots for our students to win an all-expense paid trip to ISEF, T-STEM students scored almost half (43%) of those bids. Truly remarkable. Please congratulate the following students who won awards and competed at WSSEF on April 1st.
Andrea Dang and Sandra Militaru, Developing Solketal as an Additive for Jet Fuel: An Effective Approach to Reducing Glycerol Waste.
- 2nd place overall in Energy: Chemistry Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
- 1st place for American Chemical Society Award
- “Do Real Things” award
Vaishnavi Phadnis, Exon Expression Analysis of an Alternatively Spliced Neurotrophin Receptor in Multiple Cancer Types: Potential Considerations for Targeted Therapy and Precision Medicine
- Gold Prize Grand Champion Award, ISEF Finalist
- 1st place in Computational Biology & Bioinformatics Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
- Pacific Science Center Project of Excellence Award
- Wolfram Research, Inc. Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
- Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
- Washington State University – College of Arts and Sciences Scholarship ($3,000 renewable scholarship)
- Seattle Pacific University Scholarship ($2,000 renewable scholarship)
Grace Von Scheliha and Christina Goto Plant Assisted Learning: The Effect of Epipremnum Aureum on Student Cognition and Neural Oscillations.
- 1st place overall in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
- Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
Erin Bethune, Maariyah Moinuddin and Midori Komi Correlational Study Between Hodgkin’s and Asthma.
- 1st place in Senior Division Biomedical and Health Science Category
Katherine Bo, Davina Lau and Michelle Yeh Familiarity of Music and its Effects on Stress Levels on Students
- 2nd place overall in Behavioral and Social Science Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
Emily Spencer Implementation of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator Unit in a Mobilized System.
- 1st place in Senior Division Biomedical Engineering Category
Yogi Sunkara. Comparative Analysis of Total Mercury Concentration in Salmon Species Using Atomic Fluorescence
- 1st place in Senior Division in Biochemistry category
- 2nd place award American Chemistry Society
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
Olivia Blevins. Designing a Cost-Effective and Customizable 3D Printed Tongue for the Purpose of Gaining Sufficient Unsupported Synthetic Tongue Muscle Articulation for Use in Speech and Swallowing, Comparable to Organic Tongue Muscle Articulation
- 1st place in Senior Division Biomedical Engineering Category.
- Arizona State University Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiative Award
Rashida Hakim. Particle Simulation of Phase-Dependent Fields Using Geometric Algebra
- 1st place overall in Mathematics Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement Award
Hanna Karpstein. Investigating the Effectivity of Various Behavioral Addiction Prevention Methods
- 1st place Senior Division in Behavioral and Social Sciences Category
- Olympic College STEM Award
Silvia Calinov. Water Waves to Light Waves
- 3rd place overall in Environmental Engineering Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
Eric Fan. Generating Biogas from Waste
- 1st place Senior Division in Biochemistry Category
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
- Ricoh Americas Corporation Sustainable Development Award
Apoorv Khandelwal. Molecular Dynamics Simulation and Experimental Fabrication of Nanoporous Graphene Membranes for Optimal Water Permeability in Reverse Osmosis Desalination
- ISEF Finalist
- 1st place overall in Materials Science Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
- GENIUS Olympiad (all-expense paid trip (excluding travel) for individual and supervisor to attend Genius Olympiad competition)
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
- Olympic College Foundation Scholarship ($4500)
- Pacific Science Center Project of Excellence Award
- Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
- Evergreen State College Award (one year full tuition)
Anne Lee and Issac Perrin. Performing Fluid Dynamics Analysis to Develop an Automated Valve to Halt Natural Gas Blowouts
- 1st place in Senior Division in Mechanical Engineering Category
- The Lisbon Group, LLC Award ($1000)
Prerana Kulkarni, Anjali Sribalaskandarajah and Priyanka Taneja. Utilizing Homovanillic Acid and Monoclonal Antibodies as a Novel Diagnostic Method for Schizophrenia and Parkinson's Diagnosis
- 1st place in Senior Division in the Biomedical Engineering Category
- Ohio Wesleyan University Outstanding Achievement in Science Scholarship ($20,000 renewable scholarship, total of $80,000)
- Wolfram Research, Inc. – Mathematica Certificate of Achievement
Rishi Kavikondala, Rayan Krishnan and Sashwatha Shankar. Computational Analysis of Methanogen Metabolism Processes in Autotrophic Cyanobacteria for Carbon-Neutral Photosynthetic Methane Production
- 3rd place overall in Chemical Engineering Category
- 1st place in Senior Division
Neha Hulkund. The Development of Machine Learning Linear Regression Algorithms for Epileptic Seizure Prediction.
- Already won Grand Prize at CSRSEF – ISEF Finalist
- 1st place in Senior Division in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Category
- USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station Seattle Award
2017 FBLA State Conference Results
Business Law- Vidha Sudhesh 4th place
Computer Problem Solving-Lawrence Atienza 4th place
Cyber security-Lawrence Atienza 2nd place
Healthcare administration-Salil Kanade 4th place
Insurance and Risk Management-Fred Qin 2nd place
Introduction to Business-Maxwell Wang 2nd place
Introduction to Business Communication-Sonika Tayade 8th place
Introduction to Business Procedures-Aashna Sheth 4th place
Personal Finance-Neha Nagvekar 5th place
Securities and Investments-Tyler Warden 9th place, Rashida Hakim 1st place
Business Ethics-Rashida Hakim 7th place
Business Plan- Dhruv Talwar 6th place
Emerging Business Issues-team of Shruti Kompella and Rafia Khatri 5th place
Entrepreneurship- Dhruv Talwar 9th, team of Aashna Sheth and Claire Yang 8th place, team of Ranveer Thind, Aakash Ramanachadran and Rayan Krishnan 6th place
Future Business Leader-Audrey Tseng 2nd place
Introduction to Business Presentation-team of Sonika Tayade, Ila Sharma and Aashna Sheth 7th place
Management Information Systems- team of Larry Wang, Fred Qin and Lawrence Atienza 4th place, team of Salil Kanade and Prerana Kulkarni 2nd place
Network Design-team of Amulya Param and Katie Chalmers 9th place
Public Service Announcement-Ranveer Thind and Aakash Ramanchadran 5th place
Public Speaking I-Rishi Kavikondala 10th place
Publication Design-Andrea Lee, Claire Yang and Amrita Narasimhan 8th place
2017 FBLA Regional Conference Results
Congratulations to the following students. They have qualified to participate in the state conference in Spokane in April.
Business Plan: Dhruv Talwar 2nd place
Digital Video Production: Team of Varun Vennkatesh and Sashu Shankar 6th place; Patrick Mao 3rd place
E-Business: Team of Jack Tribolett, Yukito Shida and Lucian Petriuc 6th place; William Wang 4th place
Business Calculations: Rashida Hakim 6th place
Business Communication: Vaishnavi Phadnis 1st place
Business Law: Isha Murali 5th place, Vidha Sudhesh 2nd place
Computer Problem Solving: Fred Qin 6th place; Lawrence Atienza 1st place
Cyber Security: Lawrence Atienza 1st place
Database Applications: MacQuarrie Thomson 4th place
FBLA Principles and Procedures: Ila Sharma 6th place
Healthcare: Christine Lee 6th place; Vaishnavi Phadnis 2nd place, Salil Kanade 1st place
Insurance and Risk Management: Rishi Ramesh 5th place; Fred Qin 3rd place
Introduction to Business: Maxwell Wang 2nd place
Introduction to Business Communication: Sonika Tayade 2nd place
Introduction to Business Procedures: Lauren Kim 3rd place; Aashna Sheth 1st place
Introduction to Information Technology: Rishi Kavikondala 3rd place
Introduction to Parliamentary Procedure: Toma Itagaki 2nd
Management Information Systems: Team of Salil Kanade and Prerna Kulkarni 2nd place; Team of Lawrence Atienza, Fred Qin and Larry Wang 1st place
Network Design: Team of Katie Chalmers and Amulya P 2nd place
Networking Concepts: Shruti Kompella 5the place; Amulya P 3rd place
Securities and Investments: Tyler Warden 5th place; Neha Nagvekar 3rd place, Rashida Hakim 1st place
Entrepreneurship: Dhruv Talwar 6th place; team of Aashna Sheth and Claire Yang 3rd place
Emerging Business Issues: Team of Shruti Kompella and Rafia Khatri 5th place; team of Audrey Tseng and Fred Qin 2nd place
Job Interview: Apoorv Khandelwal 4th place; Afeef Sheikh 2nd place
Business Ethics: Team of MacKenzie MacLauchlin, Pooja Senapati and Aivy Tran 5th place; Rashida Hakim 2nd place
Public Speaking I: Rishi Kavikondala 1st place
Public Speaking II: Sarah Tarta 5th place, MacQuarrie Thomson 2nd place
Impromptu Speaking: Kamran Badh 2nd place, Maxwell Wang 1st place
Introduction to Business Presentation: Team of Christine Lee, Eric Yin, Toma Itagaki 5th place; team of Aashna Sheth, Ila Sharma and Sonika Tayade 4th place
2017 TSA State Conference
Here are our 2017 Technology Student Association (TSA) results in Yakima March 16-18. The top three in each even qualify for the National conference in June.
Future Technology Teacher:
Daniella Shuman 1st place,Dharini Sribalaskandrajah 4th place
Engineering Design:
Team of Audrey Tseng, Akshita Khanna and Anjali Sribalaskandrajah 1st place
Team of Dharini Sribalaskandrajah, Ila Sharma and Betty Park 2nd place
Team of Daniella Shuman, Sashu Shankar, Pranav Sukumar and Amrita Narasimhan 3rd place
Team of Jakob Bjorner, Hemant Dhokia, Stephen Yamasaki and Rudy Banerjee 4th place
Music Prodution:
Team of Victoria Alkin, Naranjin Sahi, Andrey Grebenik and Ryan Koshy 1st place
SciVis
Team of Rishi Kavikondala, Rayan Krishnan and Ranveer Thind 4th place
Team of Ila Sharma, Amrita Narasimhan, Dharini Sribalaskandraja and Betty Park 5th place
Promotional Design
Ritika Iyer 1st place, Pranav Sukumar 4th place
Software Development
Team of Ibi Abiodun, Emma Drapp and Varun Venkatesh 1st place
Essays on Technology
Ila Sharma 4th place
Video Game Design
Team of Adity Kumar, Jake Newfeld, James Kusardi, Patrick Mao and Yocel Rivera-Pagan 2nd place
Team of Abhinav Singh and Kush Khanolker 4th place
Prepared Presentation
Rishi Kavikondala 1st place
Coding
Team of Abhinav Singh, Kush Khanolker and Pranav Sukumar 2nd place
STEM Careers
Rishi Kavikondala 1st place,Rayan Krishnan 2nd place
Extemporaneous Speech
Aaskash Ramachandram 4th place
VEX Robotics
Team of Abhinav Singh, Aditya Kumar, Akshita Khanna, Kush Kanolker, Yogi Sunkara and William Wang
Way to represent Tesla STEM!
2017 HOSA Results
Our students put forth a stellar performance at the HOSA Future Health Professionals State competition this last weekend in Spokane, bringing in 27 awards and representing Tesla STEM with honor and pride. Huge THANK YOU to Matt Travis, Sarah Newman and Lori Zebrack-Smith who chaperoned the event over the weekend as well.
The following students who placed 1st - 4th have the opportunity to go to Nationals in Orlando, FL from June 21-24 this year:
Biomedical Debate: Anna Vasyura, Larry Wang and Gautam Krishnamoorthy - 2nd place
Creative Problem Solving: Rishika Veeramachaneni, Sunya Mohammed and Anika Ghelani- 2nd place
Amulya Param, Anna Vasyura, Katie Chalmers - 5th place
Dental Science: Salil Kanade- 2nd place
Kanae Lancaster - 3rd place
Epidemiology: Andrea Dang - 1st place
Midori Komi - 2nd place
Veterinary Science: Agata Skarbek - 2nd place
Extemporaneous Health Poster: Aimee Roseberry - 3rd place
Forensic Medicine: Bella Filippini and Rose Matta - 4th place
Health Career Display: Bella Filippini and Ashiana Dhanani - 3rd place
Public Health: Rahul Srivastava and Ashiana Dhanani - 1st place
Larry Wang, Anna Vasyura, Christine Pham and Caylynn Berosik - 5th place
Healthy Lifestyle: Claire Yang - 1st place
Prepared Spelling: Afeef Sheikh - 2nd place
Aashna Sheth - 3rd place
Medical Innovation: Ayeshi and Reetika Kudallur- 3rd place
Behavioral Health, Knowledge test: Vaishnavi Phadnis - 1st place
Medical Terminology: Gautham - 1st place
Vaishnavi Phadnis- 5th place
Pathophysiology, Knowledge test: Varsha Veeramacheneni - 1st place
Christine Lee - 2nd place
Jake Newfeld - 3rd place
Nutrition, Knowledge test: Salil Kanade- 2nd place
Transcultural Healthcare, Knowledge test: Varsha Veeramacheneni - 1st
Christine Pham - 3rd place
Aditi Ekobok - 5th place
Please also congratulate Vaishnavi Phadnis who helped run the State conference as the HOSA President-elect for WA state and Varsha Veermacheneni who is currently the WA state HOSA Reporter this year.
2017 CSREF Results
March 10, 2017
What a weekend! With the HOSA State competition and he Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair (CSRSEF) the same weekend, Tesla STEM High School students took home a total of 57 awards!
We will post another article about the HOSA accolades, but in regards to CSRSEF, students raked in 29 awards, including 6 of the 1st place awards out of the 9 categories that we competed in and...drum roll...the GRAND PRIZE winner for the whole fair - which includes an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles this May for the International Science and Engineering Far (ISEF)!
Please congratulate all students that participated at CSRSEF if you see them in the halls or in your classroom-there are other students who participated and even though they did not receive a prize, they put forth a tremendous 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)
1st place: Christina Goto and Grace von Scheliha, Plant Assisted Learning: The Effects of Epipremnum Aureum on Student Cognition and Neural Oscillations
2nd place: Michelle Yeh, Davina Lau and Katherine Bo, Familiarity of Music and its Effects on Stress Levels on Students
3rd place: Hanna Karpstein, Investigating the Effectivity of Various Behavioral Addiction Prevention Methods
Honorable Mention: Rachel Ray, Amelia Sabin and Brenna Schwartz, The Effect of Personality Types on the Success of Group Work
Biomedical and Health Sciences (BMED), Bioengineering (ENBM), Translational Medicine (TMED)
1st place: Priyanka Taneja, Anjali Sribalaskandarajah and Prerana Kulkarni, Utilizing Homovanillic Acid and Monoclonal Antibodies as a Novel Diagnostic Method for Schizophrenia and Parkinson's Diagnosis
Honorable Mention: Vidha Sudesh, Using an Eye Exam to Detect Parkinson's at an Early Stage
Cellular & Molecular Biology (CELL), Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (CBIO), Microbiology (MCRO)
1st place: Neha Hulkund, The Development of Machine Learning Linear Regression Algorithms for Epileptic Seizure Prediction
2nd place: Vaishnavi Phadnis, Computational Analysis of Neurotrophin Receptor Splice Variant Expression Signatures in Multiple Cancer Types
Honorable Mention: Rishi Kavikondala, Rayan Krishnan and Sashwatha Shankar, Computational Analysis of Methanogen Metabolism Processes in Autotrophic Cyanobacteria for Carbon-Neutral Photosynthetic Methane Production
Earth and Environmental Sciences (ENEV), Biochemistry (BCHM), Chemistry (Chem)
1st Place: Yogitha Sunkara, Comparative Analysis of Total Mercury Concentration in Salmon Species Using Atomic Fluorescence
2nd Place: Justin Qui, Investigating the Effects of Floating Photovoltaic Systems on the Growth of Freshwater Algae
Honorable Mention: Sydney Meade, The Analysis of the Effects of Animal Agricultural Runoff on Water Quality Based on Nitrates, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Total Dissolved Solids and Turbidity
Environmental Engineering (ENEV)
2nd place: Silvia Calinov, Water Waves to Light Waves
Energy: Chemical (EGCH) and Physical (EGPH)
2nd place: Sandra Militaru and Andrea Dang, Solketal Additive for Aviation Fuel
Engineering Mechanics (ENMC)
1st place: Anne Lee and Issac Perrin, Performing Fluid Dynamics Analysis to Develop an Automated Valve to Halt Natural Gas Blowouts
Physics and Astronomy (PHYS), Mathematics (Math)
1st place: Rashida Hakim, Particle Simulation of Phase-Dependent Fields Using Geometric Algebra
Special Awards:
Washington State Science and Engineering (WSSEF) Award: Richard Halbert and Daniel Hoffman, Political Tribalism
Inspiring Excellence in Scientific Research and Engineering Awards: Christina Goto and Grace von Scheliha, Plant Assisted Learning: The Effects of Epipremnum Aureum on Student Cognition and Neural Oscillations
and
Yogitha Sunkara, Comparative Analysis of Total Mercury Concentration in Salmon Species Using Atomic Fluorescence
American Psychological Association for Achievement in Research in Psychological Science: Christina Goto and Grace von Scheliha, Plant Assisted Learning: The Effects of Epipremnum Aureum on Student Cognition and Neural Oscillations
Association for Women Geoscientists Award, Honorable Mention: Sydney Meade, The Analysis of the Effects of Animal Agricultural Runoff on Water Quality Based on Nitrates, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Total Dissolved Solids and Turbidity
People's Choice Award: Katrine Bjorner and Emily Spencer, Mobilizing the TENS Unit
Stockholm Junior Water Prize: Sydney Meade, The Analysis of the Effects of Animal Agricultural Runoff on Water Quality Based on Nitrates, pH, Dissolved Oxygen, Total Dissolved Solids and Turbidity
Ricoh Americas Corporation Award: Stuart Brown and Eric Fan, Generating Biogas from Waste
American Chemical Society (ACS) Prize: Yogitha Sunkara, Comparative Analysis of Total Mercury Concentration in Salmon Species Using Atomic Fluorescence
American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Award: Sandra Militaru and Andrea Dang, Solketal Additive for Aviation Fuel
Supernova Awards: Sana Fatima, The Combined Effect of Music and Running on Fluid Intelligence
and
Olivia Blevins and Audrey Tseng, Designing a Cost-Effective and Customizable 3D Printed Tongue, for the Purpose of Gaining Sufficient Unsupported Synthetic Tongue Muscle Articulation for Use in Speech and Swallowing, Comparable to Organic Tongue Muscle Articulation
Grand Prize Winner, Best in Fair : Neha Hulkund, The Development of Machine Learning Linear Regression Algorithms for Epileptic Seizure Prediction. Neha won an all-expense paid week long trip to ISEF in Los Angeles this May. ISEF is the world's largest pre-college International science fair representing approximately 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries that compete for on average of $4 million in prizes.
We are so very proud of all of our students.
2017 Model UN Results
For the 3rd year in a row, Tesla STEM's Model UN club (STEMUN) brought home multiple prizes from the Washington State MUN Conference held at the University of Washington, March 4 and 5. Model UN participants must debate and negotiate on behalf of their assigned countries, as well as submit researched position papers. Competing against students from around the region, STEMUN students demonstrated skills in diplomacy, negotiation, critical thinking, compromise, and public speaking.
The highest honor is Outstanding Delegate, achieved by two STEM Seniors and club officers: Neav Topaz (STEMUN President) and Patrick Mao (STEMUN Technology Officer.)
Aditi Ekhote received Distinguished Delegate honors and an award for her Position Paper.
In addition, Claire Whiteside received Distinguished Delegate. Harshita Bondhi, Anusha Shvastava and Tristan Stevens received awards for their position papers.
2017 Congressional Apps Hackathon Challenge
Thanks to Mrs. Prelerson for her encouragement to her students to participate in the Congressional Apps Challenge Hackathon over this weekend (http://www.congressionalappchallenge.us). One of the Tesla STEM teams (Ila Sharma, Sonika Tayade, Aashna Sheth, and Hamsa Shankar) won the Award of Excellence sponsored by Google. The award was presented by Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, who congratulated the team at the award ceremony.
2017 TSA Nationals
STEM had their best year at Nationals last week.
Victoria Alkin, Niranjan Sahi, Ryan Koshy and Ibi won first place in Music Production.
Rishi Kavikondala won 2nd place in Prepared Presentation and 3rd place in STEM Careers
Kush K, Ibi and Pranav Sukumar - Fourth place Coding
Anjali S, Audrey Tseng, Akshita K - 4th place Engineering Design
Ibi, Emma Drapp and Varun V - 6th place Software Development
2017 FBLA Nationals
2017 Model UN
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!
2016 Tesla STEM Student Awards
Click to download full list of awards and achievements earned by our students in 2016.
Rocket Scientists make the news!
Click the link below to see all about the Tesla STEM scholars who trekked to Utah to launch their rocket this summer!