A special lunchtime reception for students who participated in this year’s Siemens Competition and Intel Science Talent Search was held March 19 in the Nichols Hall rotunda. The event celebrated the hard work and dedication each of the students committed to their projects.

Science faculty also were in attendance as this year’s Intel Science Talent Search semifinalists, all seniors – Vikas Bhetanabhotla, Stephanie Chen, Christopher Fu, Anika Gupta, Saachi Jain, Sreyas Misra, Preethi Periyakoil, Rahul Sridhar, Vikram Sundar and Albert Zhao – received their certificates.

Students were treated to desserts and kind words from science department chair Anita Chetty. Shreyas Parthasarathy, grade 12, who entered both the Intel and Siemens competitions this year, said he enjoyed the process of doing research for his project. “I learned a whole bunch of stuff that I never thought I would learn,” he said, briefly discussing his project that dealt with mapping the Milky Way. “Astronomy sort of pulls from all these different disciplines.”

“I had a lot of fun doing my research,” said Periyakoil, an Intel semifinalist who said that the process was tough “but also very rewarding. It was nice to be able to share my work with others.”