June 9, 2020:

Over the weekend, the upper school’s Science Bowl team competed in the national championship of the US DOE Science Bowl, in which 64 teams from across the country participated. Harker reached the top 16 in the event — held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic — narrowly missing the top 8 after a toss-up question and a bonus answer. William Zhao also participated in a national math contest and as such was unable to compete in the final two rounds of the Science Bowl.

Feb. 12, 2020:

On Saturday, a team of Harker students won the U.S. Department of Energy’s Regional Science Bowl, held at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It was Harker’s third victory in four years. The team – made up of sophomores David Dai, Harsh Deep, Rishab Parthasarathy and William Zhao and senior Emily Liu – went undefeated the entire day, at one point rallying back from an 18 to 72 deficit in a match against Saratoga High to win 118 to 76. Upper school chemistry teacher Robbie Korin called it the “most impressive comeback I have seen since I started doing this in 1991.” The team will go on to represent the Bay Area in April at the national championship in Washington, D.C.

Another team of Harker students – freshmen Rohan Bhowmik and Nicholas Wei, juniors Michael Eng and Russell Yang and senior Kyle Li – also performed well, reaching the elimination round before tying for seventh place over all out of 28 teams.