This article originally appeared in the spring 2016 Harker Quarterly.
As the Harker Research Symposium enters its second decade, a day of exciting talks, speakers and activities awaits the Harker community!
Throughout the day, Harker students will be giving talks about their own research via breakout sessions held in various rooms at Nichols Hall. Middle school students will be giving poster presentations in the upper school gym, encouraging attendees to inquire about their research.
Exhibitors such as Google, IBM, Lockheed Martin and Nvidia, and the ever-popular chemistry magic show, will dazzle the lunchtime audience.
In addition to the great exhibits and breakout sessions by Harker students, this year’s Harker Research Symposium promises another fascinating array of keynote speakers.
Omer Artun, the first morning keynote speaker, is the CEO and founder of AgilOne, a predictive marketing cloud designed to help retailers use analytical data and marketing campaigns to increase profitability. Previously, he worked at McKinsey & Co. as a consultant, was VP of strategic marketing at CDW/Micro Warehouse and served as senior director of B2B marketing for Best Buy’s For Business division.
Brienne Ghafourifar, another morning keynote speaker, is the co-founder of Entefy, a Palo Alto-based startup that Ghafourifar hopes will one day fundamentally change the way people use technology to interact. Its pre-market release valuation has reached $50 million. At 17, she became the youngest college graduate to raise $1 million in venture funding.
This year’s afternoon keynote will be given by Jeffrey Rothschild (Jackiel, grade 12; Isaac ’14), who spent a decade at Facebook as its VIP of infrastructure engineering.
He is now an investor and entrepreneurial mentor, and sits on the board of directors of Primary Data, Interana and Lytmus. Additionally,he is a part of Accel Partners’ venture development team and is on Vanderbilt University’s Board of Trust. As a philanthropist, he has worked with the Kisii Eye Care Institute, which provides restorative eye surgery to western Kenyans, and the Dairy Farmers of Cherangany, another Kenya-based organization.
Alen Malek ’05, currently a Ph.D. candidate at University of California, Berkeley, will be this year’s alumni keynote speaker.
A founding member of Harker’s robotics team, he later attended Stanford University, earning a B.S. in mathematics and an M.S. in electrical engineering. At Berkeley, he is working on his Ph.D. in computer science, performing research on sequential decision-making.
This event is open to all members of the Harker community and promises to be filled with fun and discovery. For more information, please visit www.harker.org/symposium.