Awards and Special Recognition

An integral part of the SSW program is an excellent Advanced Student Science Fair Research Program that involves advanced undergraduate and graduate students mentoring junior and senior high school students on their projects. This program offers students an opportunity to ask meaningful questions and conduct careful investigations, imperative to scientific progress (California Science Content Standards Grades K-12, Investigation and Experimentation).

NASA Goddard HESSI Program
In 2000, fifteen SSW students had the opportunity to develop a working optical demonstration of NASA's RHESSI (Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) Telescope [see picture]. View the website about the project here. The RHESSI Demonstration Telescope is intended to show how RHESSI will make images in hard x-rays and gamma rays. 

At the invitation of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, our students presented their project at the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division Conference in Lake Tahoe in June 2000.

Their abstract and presentation was published in the Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society (Vol. 32, No. 2, 2.122).  The document of the RHESSI project SSW's students developed can be viewed at the Smithsonian/NASA Astronomy Abstract Service.  The document of the RHESSI project SSW's students developed can be viewed here. The demonstration is discussed on the NASA HESSI website.

Synopsys Championships
Since 1996, 159 of our students have received top awards at the Synopsys Championships including:

  • Two Isabelle Stone Award Grand Prizes
  • Three Grand Prize Intel ISEF awards 2007 and Five Grand Prize alternate Intel ISEF awards at the Synopsys Championship – 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007.
  •  In addition, SSW students have received 42 - 1st place Awards, 36 - 2nd place Awards, 39 - Honorable Mentions, and 132 Special Awards between 1998 – 2008 at the Synopsys Championships.
  • 2002 - designed and built NASA RHESSI website: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/hessidemo/
  • 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007 SSW received the SCVSEFA Horace Lucich Teacher Fellowship Award.
  • 2004-2005 - Two of our middle school students were semifinalists at the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.
  • 2005 & 2007 - Three students received Internships from MedImmune and Genencor.
  • 2005 - One student received an all-expense paid trip from Toyota's Youth Program to the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. The goal of World Expo 2005 is to work towards "creating a better world where humankind and nature can co-exist in harmony."
  •  2006 and 2007 – Two students received a full scholarship to the COSMOS Student Research Program - a residential summer program for high school students where they learn cutting edge science and make new friends while living on the beautiful UC Santa Cruz campus
  • 2006 and 2007 - Two students received the Intel Promising Young Science Award
  • 2008 – One student received the Santa Clara County Biotech Education Partnership Award
  • 2008 – One student received the Al Foster award
  • 2006-2008 – Five students have the following Patents Pending:
    • Can Bio Films Minimize Liquefaction In New Orleans? - Sunil Bodapati 9th grade
    • Using Mucilage From The Cactus Opuntia ficus indica To Filter Populated Water -Anna Kuhns and Brianna Hall 7th graders
    • Antimicrobial Activity of Arthropod Excretions - Timothy Tran 9th grade
    • Horseshoe Crab LAL-Based Packaging Material – Deepika Bodapati – 6th grade

California State Science Fair

  • 25 SSW students have participated at the California State Science Fair (CSSF), winning six awards in 2003, 2004, 2005,2006 – including two second place category awards in Microbiology, a third place category award in Microbiology, a third place category award in Earth Sciences/ Planetary Sciences/ Physical Environments, a $250 special award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers Award, and a $250 special award from the American Institute of Professional Geologists Geology Award
Anna

Sunil 

Deepika

Tim