Harker School-Upper Campus
Project Awards 2026
Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship
| School | Teacher | Student | Award | Title | Gr | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harker School-Upper Campus | Anuradha | Datar | Raeanne | Li | 2nd Award, RRI Physical Science and Engineering Category | Enhancing Virtual Reconstruction of Herculaneum Scrolls with Deep Learning Segmentation (RRI Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 |
| Ethan | Liang | Grand Prize - Best of Championship - Biological Sciences - Qualified to be a Regeneron ISEF Finalist, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | ApiSense: A Weather-Aware Multimodal Framework for Environmental Pesticide Detection Using Honey Bees as Biosensors (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Nathan | Mao | 2nd Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | A Superpixel and Machine Learning based approach to Mineral Identification in Apollo Lunar Basalt Thin Sections (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 | |||
| Andrew Dongjoo | Shin | Grand Prize Alternate - Biological Sciences - Qualified for California Science & Engineering Fair (CSEF), Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | Effect of Dopaminergic Toxicity on Spatiotemporal Network Dynamics in Parkinson's-Induced Human Midbrain Organoids (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 1st Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Abigail | Wang | Grand Prize Alternate - Biological Sciences - Qualified for California Science & Engineering Fair (CSEF), Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | A Multi-Branch 3D-Aware Deep Learning Framework for Generalizable Small-Molecule Drug Discovery at HTS-Scale Performance (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Matthew | Harley | Riya | Bharath | First place: $500 and Framed Certificate of Achievement, SVACS High School Award for Excellence in Chemistry | The Effect of Nanoparticle Type and Crystal Facet on the Photocatalytic Removal of Ethinyl Estradiol from Water (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Siddhant | Gaur | 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Discovery of Heavy Metal Neurotoxicity as a Suicide Biomarker via Multimodal Profiling and Behavioral Endophenotyping (Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |||
| Arshia | Sankar | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | FreshAlert: A Novel AI-Driven Approach to Food Spoilage Detection for Reducing Household Food Waste (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Laya Sai | Sunkara | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | FreshAlert: A Novel AI-Driven Approach to Food Spoilage Detection for Reducing Household Food Waste (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Eric | Johnson | Selena | Ghane | Honorable Mention, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Quantitative Analysis of Regenerative and Behavioral Biomarkers For Planarians Under Reactive Oxygen Species Stress (Biological Science and Engineering) | 9 | |
| $100 and a Certificate of Achievement, Inez M. Lechner Award | |||||||
| Reyansh | Malla | 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Modeling Methylmercury's Nutrient-Mimic Uptake Using a Selenomethionine Transporter Competition Assay in C. elegans (Biological Science and Engineering) | 9 | |||
| Samuel | Lederer | Srishti | Dhawan | Certificate of Achievement + Letter from Sponsor (regarding $25 gift card redeemable online + internship opportunity with ASEI Industry Partner + free 1 year membership to ASEI), ASEI Award | Development of a Rapid, Low-Cost Colorimetric Biosensor for Endometrial Cancer Screening (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Nikita | Jain | Honorable Mention, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Effects of Antioxidant N-acetylcysteine Pretreatment on Yeast Survival Under Hydrogen Peroxide-Induced Oxidative Stress (Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |||
| Anish | Kosaraju | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | A Mechanistic Framework for Identifying and Neutralizing Latent Deception Signatures in Large Language Models (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Aanya | Sharma | 3rd place:$200 and Framed Certificate of Achievement, SVACS High School Award for Excellence in Chemistry | Determining the Extraction Effect of Cineole and Decanoic Acid on Microplastics found in Waste Water (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Exceptional Merit, Certificate (all Grades), SPV Market Research | |||||||
| Honorable Mention, Physical Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Claire | Tian | 2nd Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | Pathogenic Role of Cytotoxic GNLY+ GZMB+ CD8 T Cells in Immune-Related Adverse Events (irAEs) from Cancer Immunotherapy (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Swati | Mittal | Lucas | Wu | 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | An End-to-End Deep Generative Pipeline for De Novo Antigen Discovery in Epitope-Based Viral Vaccines (Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Terese | Navarra | Michael | Lau | Honorable Mention, Biological Science and Engineering Category | Predicting the Rate of Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's Patients: A Comparison of Cell Type and Subtype Gene Signatures (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Ian | Lee | Honorable Mention, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Development of a Self-Healing Biodegradable Plastic from Agricultural Waste (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Sam | Li | Honorable Mention, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Development of a Self-Healing Biodegradable Plastic from Agricultural Waste (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Cynthia Xinyao | Wang | Upper Division :- Honorable Mention Student Award: $50 and Certificate of Achievement, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) | A Novel 3D MRI-Based Multi-Modal Approach for Parkinson's Disease Development and Visualization (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Elizabeth | Zhang | Grand Prize - Best of Championship - Physical Sciences - Qualified to be a Regeneron ISEF Finalist, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | Orbital Reconstruction and Discovery of Hidden Circumbinary Planets through Eclipse Timing Residuals and N-Body Dynamics (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Eric | Nelson | Medha | Choudhry | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | NeuroTrace:A Deep Learning Framework for Monitoring Multiple Sclerosis Progression from Oculomotor and Speech Biomarkers (Physical Science and Engineering) | 10 | |
| Dhruva | Gopal | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | A TCN Search for Perturbations in Space Probe Ephemerides for Evidence of a Primordial Black Hole Flyby (Physical Science and Engineering) | 9 | |||
| $100 and a Certificate of Achievement, Inez M. Lechner Award | |||||||
| Marina | Peregrino | Sanyi | Yao | 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | Edge-AI Multispectral Imaging System for Detecting Plant Diseases and Stresses (Physical Science and Engineering) | 9 | |
| Mike | Pistacchi | Hanz | Baek | 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | What is the effect of short and long term mechanical vibrations on regeneration in planarians? (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |
| Isabelle | Niu | McCalmont Engineering Renewable Energy Award, $250 (all grades), SPV Market Research | Beyond Detection: A Novel Deployable Solar Flare Forecasting and Real-Time X-Ray Flux Prediction System (Physical Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 2nd Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Claire | Xu | Upper Division :- Honorable Mention Student Award: $50 and Certificate of Achievement, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) | NeuroAxisNet: Brain-Blood AI Model for Early Detection and Progression Mapping in Tauopathy Neurodegenerative Disorders (Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| IEEE Electro-Technology $25 Amazon gift card and a certificate, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | |||||||
| Evan | Zhang | Grand Prize - Best of Championship - Biological Sciences - Qualified to be a Regeneron ISEF Finalist, Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | Self-Sensing, Shape-Morphing Respiratory Ventilator Using Hydraulically Amplified Self-Healing Electrostatic Actuators (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 12 | |||
| $100, Robby Beyers Innovative Solutions Awards | |||||||
| 1st Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| IEEE Electro-Technology $25 Amazon gift card and a certificate, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers | |||||||
| Mala | Raghaven | Aditya | Shivakumar | Grand Prize Alternate - Physical Sciences - Qualified for California Science & Engineering Fair (CSEF), Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Assn - Board of Directors Awards - High School | Low-Cost Arsenic(V) Detection and Hotspot Mapping with Methylene-Blue-Gold Nanoparticles and Smartphone Spectroscopy (RRI Physical Science and Engineering) | 12 | |
| $500 Grand Prize, Robby Beyers Innovative Solutions Awards | |||||||
| 2nd place:$300 and Framed Certificate of Achievement, SVACS High School Award for Excellence in Chemistry | |||||||
| 1st Award, RRI Physical Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| $200 to Student, Dr. Michael V. McCusker Award | |||||||
| Jeff | Sutton | Anusha | Kotalwar | First place, $250 Wireless Communications Alliance Award, Wireless Communications Alliance | DroneBee: An AI-Driven Autonomous Drone for Precise Flower Detection and Pollination to Support Crop Production (Biological Science and Engineering) | 9 | |
| 2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | |||||||
| Evan Matthew | Yuan | Honorable Mention, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category | Effects of continued reinforcement on pigeons' sequence variability (RRI Biological Science and Engineering) | 11 | |||
| Ran | Tao | Saria Avril | Lum | 1st Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category | PatchPal: A Trypsin-Responsive Hydrogel Eczema Patch for Targeted Ceramide Delivery in Post-Steroid Recovery (Biological Science and Engineering) | 10 | |