32 Thomas Jefferson High Students in Running for $100K Scholarship Prize

ALEXANDRIA, VA — Thirty-two students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology are semi-finalists in the 2016 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Winners in the national contest will get a piece of $500,000 in scholarship money, including the two top prizes, each worth $100,000.

More than 1,600 projects were submitted for the math and science contest, with 498 selected as semi-finalists. That group will be narrowed further during regional competitions in November, before the national finals in Washington, D.C. in December.

The Thomas Jefferson High students in the running include:

• Naman Baraya
• Katherine Barbano
• Kelly Cho
• Emily He
• Jerry Huang
• Eugene Jeong
• Harriet Khang
• Kavya Kopparapu
• Neeyanth Kopparapu
• Elizabeth Ling
• Joyce Liu
• Richard Lun
• Vishnu Nair
• Christopher Niu
• Mihir Patel
• Shwetark Patel
• Siona Prasad
• Nikhil Sardana
• Suhas Sastry
• Vikram Shivakumar
• Ashwin Srinivasan
• Edward Sun
• Rohan Taneja
• Andrew Wang
• Charles Wang
• Eric Wang
• Lauryn Wu
• William Xu
• Lydia You
• Arnold Zhang
• Justin Zhang
• Christine Zhao

Created in 1999 by the Siemens Foundation, the competition was established to provide more opportunities for talented students, while encouraging innovation and research, according to the organization's website.

"This competition seeks to recognize and build a strong pipeline for the nation’s most promising scientists, engineers and mathematicians," according to the site.

In August, Thomas Jefferson High was again named Newsweek's Top Public High School for 2016 — one of only four schools in the state to make the list.

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