Palo Alto Unified School District
Project Awards 2026
Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
| School | Teacher | Student | Award | Title | Gr | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fletcher (Ellen) Middle School | Marisa | Busick | Myra | Saxena | Isabelle Stone Award for Best Biological Science Projects - Qualified for State Science Fair, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - Middle School | Investigating lifestyle data, microRNAs and Immune Signals as Early Biomarkers of Pediatric Type 2 Diabetes (Biological Science and Engineering) | 6 |
| Lower Division :- Honorable Mention Student Award: $50 and Certificate of Achievement, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) | |||||||
| Nominated to compete envelope to apply for Thermo Fisher JIC, Thermo Fisher JIC - 6th Grade | |||||||
| 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Greene (Frank S., Jr.) Middle School | Abigail | Garrison | Ananya | Tyagi | $100 per student, Bessie Stough Awards | Integrated DLI (Daily Light Integral) and Root-Zone Temperature Effects on Lettuce Growth and Spectral Reflectance (Biological Science and Engineering) | 6 |
| 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Anushka | Tyagi | $100 per student, Bessie Stough Awards | Integrated DLI (Daily Light Integral) and Root-Zone Temperature Effects on Lettuce Growth and Spectral Reflectance (Biological Science and Engineering) | 7 | |||
| 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Henry M Gunn High School | Mark Steven | Brassey | Jingzhi | Gu | GR 9-12: Second place, $75 and trophy, Richardson Environmental Awards | The Impact of Urban Light Pollution on Nocturnal Bird Migration in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 |
| Tomas | Grim | Nicholas Cheuk-Fung | Lo | Honorable Mention, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Socioeconomic Impact of Building Efficiency (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Daniel | Hahn | Shiqi | Dai | Honorable Mention, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | FairGRPO: Fair Reinforcement Learning For Equitable Clinical Reasoning (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Michaela | Hlasek | Tianyi Mia | Li | 2nd Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | Defining the Mechanisms that Regulate Transmembrane Protein 106B Dimer Formation in Frontotemporal Dementia (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Jena | Lee | Victor | Peng | 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Patient-Adaptive Few-Shot Learning in Hyperspectral Imaging for Intraoperative Brain Tumor Margin Assessment (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Heather | Mellows | Sharvi | Dhamdhere | 2nd Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | Anti-Inflammatory Potential of Curcumin: Modulation of Cytokine Expression in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Angela | Merchant | Eleanor | Lee | 1st Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | Time Series of Hair Estradiol as Measured by HPLC-MS/MS (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Casey | O'Connell | Sophie | Tong | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Active Illumination-assisted Multiview Camera System for Robust 3D Visual Perception in Challenged Environments (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Micah | Wynn | Diya Kacker | Bhagat | Honorable Mention, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Adaptive Sensor-Controlled Irrigation and Fertilization System for Small-Scale Urban Farming (Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Ning | Xu | McKenna | Chang | 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Utilizing Machine Learning to Predict Heart Transplant Allocation and Evaluate Gender Disparities (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Chloe | Wu | 2nd Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Smart shoes for feet monitoring (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| IEEE Electro-Technology $25 Amazon gift card and a certificate, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | |||||||
| Elana | Zizmor | Aidan | Peng | $100, Robby Beyers Innovative Solutions Awards | Integrating furfural production and pyrolysis for enhanced biomass valorization: a biorefinery optimization study (Physical Science and Engineering) | 12 | |
| 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Palo Alto High School | Randy | Scilingo | Olivia | Cho | 2nd Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | AI Assisted Knitting: Using Machine Learning to Correct Mistakes in Knitted Projects (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 |
| Kathryn | Widen | Arjun | Phanse | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Wi-Fi CSI Based Low-Cost Security System with Self-Supervised Training for Open-Set Intruder Alerting (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Stanford (Jane Lathrop) Middle School | Mary | Melnick | Ameya Indu | Madhavan | 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Can Game-Based Learning Increase Knowledge of Dietary Restrictions? (Biological Science and Engineering) | 7 |