The winners of the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search were announced Tuesday, and although Harker’s two finalists, Rohan Mahajan and Nikhil Parthasarathy, both grade 12, were not among top 10 winners, we are tremendously proud of their accomplishment in making it to the finals in Washington, D.C.

Harker was the only school in the U.S. to have more than one finalist, and this year’s contest marked the first time California surpassed New York for the largest number of finalists, with a total of 11 students among the 40 who traveled to Washington for the final round of the competition.

Harker extends its warmest congratulations to all 11 members of the California contingent, especially Evan O’Dorney, 17, of Danville, named the first-place winner of the $100,000 prize for his project, a mathematical comparison of two methods of estimating the square root of an integer. We further extend accolades to the remaining 29 finalists for their impressive application to their projects.

O’Dorney was one of three California students to make the top 10, out of the 1,744 entries from high school seniors nationwide. Selena Li, 17, from Fair Oaks, took fifth place and was awarded $30,000, and San Diego’s Xiaoyu “Carrie” Cao, 17 took eighth and won $20,000. Go science!

Harker’s past and present achievements in the Intel STS were recently covered as part of a San Jose Mercury News story on Harker’s science program.