On February 25, Woodbridge High School hosted the 2014 Irvine Unified School District (IUSD) Science Fair. Amongst a pool of district wide competitors, 16 University High School (UHS) students received honorable mention, outstanding award and top division awards at the Science Fair and will compete at the Orange County Science and Engineering Fair (OCSEF) held from April 8 to 10, 2014.
Jonathan Huang (Fr.) received an Outstanding Project Award for his project “Analyzing Word Frequency and Textual Features in Computational Linguistics.” This was his first time competing at the IUSD science fair. Since he began participating at Science Olympiad in middle school, Huang has had a strong interest in math and science. Huang said, “This science fair was a great way to combine my two interests.” Huang’s project focused on distinguishing between different writing styles using mathematical models.
Mr. David Knight (Science Dept.) said, “The UHS students labored for weeks conducting research, analyzing data, and preparing for their presentation.”
Yelena Mandelshtam (Jr.), Jong Ho Park (Jr.), Grace Xu (Jr.) and Andrew Hong (Jr.) also received an Outstanding Project Award. Alex Chang (Jr.), Aurnov Chattopadhyay (Fr.), Hari Garg (So.), James Gui (So.), Akshay Hampapur (Sr.), Sandeep Kambhampati (Fr.), Hayato Kato (Fr.) and Kevin Lee (Sr.) received a Division Award. Swathi Chirackel (So.) and Ieeshiah Otarola (So.) received Honorable Mention.
UHS students have participated annually at the Science Fair during the past decade. In 2011, UHS hosted the 30^th IUSD Science Fair. According to IUSD Newsflash, students from thirty schools presented approximately 380 projects at the elementary, middle school and high school divisions at UHS in 2011.
Annually, IUSD high schools alternate as hosts of the competition although Irvine High School has hosted the event for multiple consecutive years. Mr. Knight said, “I encourage all of my students to enter the District Science Fair. This competition is a good platform for students to build their careers on.”
Written by MONICA LAFERLA
Staff Writer