Harker Opens First High School Triple Helix Chapter; First Articles Posted

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The Triple Helix Online, the online journal of The Triple Helix, Inc., recently published several stories written by Harker students. The Triple Helix, Inc. (TTH), is an international nonprofit organization made up of students from universities worldwide that specializes in journalism in the fields of science, society, business, ethics and law.

Harker is the first and so far only high school chapter of TTH, which has 27 chapters in universities all over the world and receives funding from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The partnership was kick-started by Jennifer Ong ’06, who is TTH’s chief operating officer. Students Naomi So, grade 12, and Pavitra Rengarajan, grade 11, act as the editors-in-chief for the Harker chapter, and collaborate with TTH senior editors to prepare Harker student submissions for publication.

The Harker student-written articles published so far are “Medical Innovation: Future Promise of DNA Vaccines” by Trisha Basu, grade 12, senior Peter Gao’s piece on the legal implications of modern technological warfare, “The Dirt that Solves Global Warming” by senior Kristi Lui, a story on the impact of climate change by Suchita Nety, grade 10, an exploration of the social stigmas caused by epilepsy by sophomore Paulomi Bhattacharya, a study of the safety of hands-free phone calls while driving by Apurva Tandon, grade 10,  “Food Frenzy: Growing Concerns Over Genetically Modified Foods” by Divyahans Gupta, grade 9 and a story on the evidence of water on the moon’s surface by freshman Brandon Yang.

Basu and Tandon had their writings made into posters, which were displayed at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., which took place Feb. 17-21. The two students were in attendance at the meeting as the guests of Triple Helix. They attended a number of workshops and met members of TTH from other universities, as well as attending talks with top researchers.

Anita Chetty, science department chair, who accompanied Basu and Tandon to Washington, said The Triple Helix offers a way for students to parlay their interests in subjects such as science and technology into an avenue for publication. “They like to look at the issues,” she said. “They’re not necessarily interested in research. They want to do more of a commentary.”

The Harker chapter’s print edition of the Triple Helix magazine will be distributed at the Harker Research Symposium on April 23.

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