Saratoga High School Students: Imagining the Future

Editor's Note: This article was written for Saratoga Patch as part of a San Jose State University journalism class assignment. The writer welcomes your feedback and comments.

With solutions to help aid cancer research to in-depth data on how to prevent global warming, students from all over Silicon Valley impressed judges with their science projects Wednesday during the 53rd annual Silicon Valley Science Fair.

The Fair, sponsored by Synopsys and the Santa Clara Valley Science and Engineering Fair Association (SCVSEFA), was held at the San Jose Convention Center.

According to SCVSEFA board member Veena Jain, the Fair is an opportunity for local students to develop the skills they learn in the classroom.

"The teachers work hard to get them here and their parents encourage that," Jain said. "All we're doing is providing a forum for them to compete with each other and do well."

Under the Fair's strict deadlines and requirements, students must turn in an application before conducting their science experiments to ensure they follow safety and ethics rules, as well as reaching a certain science standard according to SCVSEFA board member Heidi Strahm Black.

The experiments must also be independent, project-based research within the fields of computer science, environmental science, medicine, health, chemistry, biology and others.

This year, 1,110 students participated.

Thomas Li, a junior at Saratoga High School, presented his project entitled, "Investigating Chronological Life Span of Different Strains of S. cerevisiae."

"I did research and found out that this chronological aging of yeast is actually really important to the aging process, but it's not widely studied," Li said. "So I felt like this would be a place to find my niche."

Fellow high school classmate David Zarrin has been participating in the Fair for seven years and returned this year with a project titled, "A Hybrid Pulsating Turbine Jet Engine."

Inspired by the 2009 US Airways flight 1549 that flew into a flock of geese and miraculously landed on the Hudson River safely, Zarrin worked to create an engine that would allow a pilot to pulse to a safe landing with a back-up system.

"I thought it was pretty ridiculous that a flock of birds could take down an entire plane and I had been working on car engines before, so I decided to get into jets," Zarrin said.

Zarrin's mother Teresa still remembers his very first science fair as a sixth-grader from Redwood Middle School.

"He's always be kind of puttering in the garage, and just testing things out and being curious about things in general," she said.

In the future, Zarrin hopes to study mechanical engineering as an undergraduate and eventually become a surgeon.

"It's out of this world what these students are capable of," Jain said. "We have sixth-graders applying for patents already. It's amazing."

According to Jain, students who advance within the science fair continue to the California State Science Fair, Broadcom Masters Competition, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and the I-SWEEEP Olympiad.

Winners of this year's science fair will be announced April 1.