Mustang Achievements

Congratulations to senior, Roshni Martins for being awarded 2nd Place Grand Award in the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics category at the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2023; the largest pre-collegiate STEM competition in the world with representatives from over 60 countries. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals sponsors both the award and the fair. Roshni qualified for ISEF after winning the Grand Prize - Best of Championship in the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship in the Biological Sciences and Engineering category.

CLICK HERE for the Press Release! (5/2023)

Congratulations to The Epitaph / hhsepitaph.com, on being named a Crown Award Finalist by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

Crown finalists will receive either a Gold or Silver Crown Award during a special presentation at Columbia University in New York City.

This is an impressive feat, as CSPA’s Board of Judges selected only 225 finalists from over 800 entries submitted from across the country and around the world. Not every publication that enters is selected as a Crown finalist. Homestead's school’s staff exemplifies the type of journalism and storytelling that CSPA is proud to recognize and feature during its annual awards program.

A total of 805 digital, newspapers, magazines and yearbooks published during the 2021-2022 academic year were eligible for judging in the 2023 Crown Awards program. From September to November 2022, Crown entries were judged virtually by student and professional media experts.

CLICK HERE for the Press Release! (7/2022)

Homestead's yearbook and newspaper programs – Pegasus and The Epitaph – have won a combined 54 awards across two annual contests. Both contests evaluated submitted work that was published in the last calendar year. The Epitaph was awarded 24 awards from Youth Journalism International, an organization dedicated to scholastic journalism for students across the globe. And Pegasus and The Epitaph were awarded a combined 29 awards from the Journalism Education Association of Northern California, an organization that serves high school journalism programs from Bakersfield and Santa Barbara to the Oregon border. Pegasus was also awarded second place in JEANC’s coveted Best of the West competition. CLICK HERE for the press release!  Below is a list of students honored.

Awards winners from Homestead include the following current and former journalism and yearbook students: senior Katherine Alvarez, senior Abby Berwick, senior Amber Birrell, senior Joss Broward, senior Karuna Chandran, junior Aiko Charon, junior Gaby Cristancho, freshman Parth Dhaulakhandi, sophomore Emilia Diamantidou, sophomore Manya Girivasan, junior Nathan Gu, freshman Jesus Hernandez Tornez, senior Seoyoung Hwang, senior Niyatee Jain, senior Eric Jaramillo, senior Hyein Kim, junior Nicole Kim, junior Lia Klebanov, senior Mikaela Kwan, freshman Trey Kwon, senior Erin Loh, senior Macy Li, senior David Lin, sophomore Brian Ling, junior Anu Nagarajan, freshman Alambra Perez, sophomore Anderson Picone, junior Nicole Pimenta Innecco, freshman Shaurya Prayag, junior Zeinab Rakhshandehroo, senior Brevin Reed, senior Mae Richardson, senior Hope Saena, junior Lindsey Steel, freshman Gaia Sumner, sophomore Helen Tam, junior Rajiv Venkatesh, sophomore Mackie Vu, sophomore Evelyn Wang, junior Faith Watters, senior Shriya Wagholikar, sophomore Avery Woodman, senior Chloe Wong, freshman Suri Yau, junior Annabelle Yip, senior Emma Yu, sophomore Veronica Zhao. (5/2023)

On May 9th,2023 after a three year hiatus, our 13th Annual EL Speech Contest at Fremont High School. All five high schools in the District participated in this competition. Students in the ELD 1, 2 and 3 classes had to give a 3 to 5 minute, memorized speech on an Informative or Persuasive topic. Students were nervous, but they got it done!  We are so proud of all of them!! 

Results are below! Out of the 96 finalists, 40 of them were from Homestead!

Informative A1

• 2nd place-Citlali Avila (ELD 3)
• 3rd place-Hangyeol Kim (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Sheyla Lopez Lopez (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-John Fabricio Vargas Luna (ELD 1)

Informative A2

• 2nd place-Heorhii (George) Stepchenko (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Jennifer Castillo Garcia (ELD 1)

Informative B2

• 2nd place-Juna Lee (ELD 2)
• 3rd place-Erick Derramona Guerrero (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Angel Mendez Alvarado (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Dayana Cepeda (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Sara Garzon Rey (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Yimeng (Evita) Sun (ELD 3)

Informative B1

• 1st place-Joaquin Garcia (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Isabel Ayala Gonzalez (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Roham Olfat (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Taizo Sugimoto (ELD 2)

Informative C1

• Honorable Mention-Juan Molina Hernandez (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Sana Suzuki (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Setya Ommaty (ELD 2)

Informative C2

• 1st place-Mingkun Li (ELD 2)
• 2nd place-Alma Ben Levi (ELD 2)
• 3rd place-Hyunuk Lee (ELD 3)
• Honorable Mention-Brandon Cardenas Landa (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Jonathan Aharoni (ELD 3)
• Honorable Mention-Nubynes Reyes Barboza (ELD 3)

Informative D1

• 1st place-Jorge Cardenas Solano (ELD 1)
• 3rd place-Haoyuan Guan (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Aika Yoshida (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Nagisa Yoshida (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Wenxin (Ivy) Huang (ELD 1)

Informative D2

• 1st place-Amit Shorer (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Angel Gabriel Flores (ELD 1)
• Honorable Mention-Nao Iwai (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Yuchia Lin (ELD 2)

Persuasive A1

• 1st place-Jose Aldana (ELD 3)
• 3rd place-Sabrina Kulieva (ELD 3)

Persuasive A2

• 2nd place-Iddo Cabiri (ELD 2)

Persuasive B1

• Honorable Mention-Rinka Yoshida (ELD 2)

Persuasive B2

• 2nd place-Anant Gupta (ELD 2)
• Honorable Mention-Vittoria Drugman (ELD 3)

CLICK HERE to see Homestead student Elise Vambenepe interview with the local Japanese TV station!  Her interview begins around the 3 minute mark. (7/2022)

Last month, April of 2022, a team from Homestead High School: Rhea Mishra, Shubhanshi Sharma, Arya Khokar, Ishita Srivatsan, and Rittika Saha placed 2nd in the Medical Engineering category at the Bioengineering High School Competition (BioEHSC) at UC Berkeley. They were awarded for their research titled, “Using a pseudotyped lentiviral mRNA vector to mediate post-ischemic stroke symptoms” with Mrs. Alleyne-Levy as their coach and Mr. Fung as their chaperone. The HHS science department was also awarded a pathogen protection education kit as part of their prize! 

BioEHSC is the largest bioengineering competition in the nation and is an annual group research and design competition for high school students.

Congratulations to Arabelle Park, the 3rd place Osam Scholarship recipient.  In recognition of distinguished achievement at the 12th Kyung-Uhn Annual Scholarship Speech Contest on Korean History, Culture and People on April 30, 2022.

CLICK HERE for the Press Release! (4/2022)

Congratulations to Chairish, the 5th-period Virtual Enterprise Class Company, for making it to the New York Youth Business Summit for the first time in Homestead history! They will be competing in the final round of the National Marketing Competition. They were also extremely successful at the Bakersfield Trade Show where they got the Gold Award for their Company Newsletter and Branding as well as a Bronze Award for Salesmanship. We are extremely proud of the hard-working Chairish employees and wish the Marketing Department success in New York in April 2022). If you wish to learn more about their virtual company here (chairishve.com) is the link to their website.

Congratulations to Sohum Phadke as he was selected as a Youngarts winner in the Photography category. YoungArts identifies the most accomplished young artists in the visual, literary and performing arts, and provides them with creative and professional development opportunities throughout their careers. Along with getting life changing advice in the arts, Homestead also gets the opportunity to get honored on the national level. 

Youngarts Website : https://youngarts.org/ 

Congrats to Vivian Reutens for placing in the top 10 out of over 150 competitors at the 3rd Annual EconBowl Individual Track on 11/13/2021! EconBowl is an international economics competition hosted by the Youth Economics Initiative for high school students across the world with over $2775 in cash prizes. This year, there were over 500 student competitors in the team and individual track.

 A little bit about us & the competition: The YEI is a coalition of high school economics clubs. Currently, we have over 3000 student members in over 70 clubs around the world. EconBowl is an international competition for high school students. This year, our competition was held on 11/13 and drew over 500 competitors total in our team and individual round. 

CLICK HERE for the NLC Press Release!

We are delighted to announce that the Homestead Robotics team has received recognition at the FRC Bay Area Awards Show with the “Engineering Design” Award 2021! After coming up with dozens of ideas and themes, the game design team finally decided on “High Seas”, a pirate-themed game. The objective of the game is to find and store treasure in each team’s treasure chest. After presenting their ideas, our team won an award for its excellent engineering in the design process.

Please join us in congratulating, Marissa Lee and Christine Watts as they have been recognized with an NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing (AiC). Our Bay Area Affiliate of the AiC Award gives three levels of recognition, Award Winner, Honorable Mention, and Rising Star. From a pool of 234 applications covering 13 Bay Area counties we selected 70 Award Winners. The accomplishments of these students is truly remarkable, compelling us to increase the number of Award Winners from 50 last year to 70 this year. We have included mention of any national award level recognition as well where applicable. Find out more at  www.ncwit.org. Awardees are:

Marissa Lee, Affiliate Rising Star
Christine Watts, Affiliate Honorable Mention

Congratulations to Arabelle Park, the 1st place Than-Ahm Yong-Ku Cho Scholarship recipient.  In recognition of distinguished achievement at the 11th Kyung-Uhn Annual Scholarship Speech Contest on Korean History, Culture and People on April 24, 2021.

Congratulations to our HHS teachers and students who were among the 2021 Silicon Valley Regional Synopsys Science Fair winners for their projects!

CLICK HERE to view the list of names, projects & awards!

CLICK HERE to view the list of teacher awards!

We are proud to announce that Eli Chan, Jacob Tang, and Rohan Ahuja earned funding up to $5,000 from the Dragon Kim Foundation to launch a community service project over the summer. Along with funding, these students earned 3 weekends of leadership training, and mentorship from a business professional. Congratulations! Check out the 2021 Fellowship cohort.

Congratulations to Anushka Sanyal and Josh Sanyal! Both were recognized among many for their outstanding work in STEM research at the Oregon and Northern California Regional Junior Science & Humanities Symposium (JSHS). Please find the list of Semi Finalists and Finalists on our Regional Website.

Anushka Sanyal, “Intronic RNA as a Therapeutic Target in Neurodegeneration: A Multipronged Study of RNA Lariat Debranching Enzyme DBR1”

Josh Sanyal, “A Weakly Supervised LSTM Model for Longitudinal Breast Cancer Recurrence Prediction via Unstructured Clinical Narratives”

I am delighted to share that our students won the Bay Section Conference for the 24th consecutive year. For those students that you know, please do show some love when you see them. Also, special kudos to Graeme Logie as the FBLA Bay Section Director for managing a quality and challenging remote conference. He put in countless hours to make the conference a success for all students involved! The links for the Opening Session (the team used a drone to film much of this and it is really cool!) and the Closing Session and Awards of Excellence are included below. Please CLICK HERE to see the press release by Homestead's VP of Public Relations, Erin Yoon, for the full results. ~ Mr. Bryon Lee

CLICK HERE for the video of the Opening Session

CLICK HERE for video of the Closing Session and the Awards of Excellence Ceremony

Congratulations to HHS student, Anushka Sanyal, has been named as a top 300 scholars in the 80^th Regeneron Science Talent Search—the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and mathematics competition for high school seniors. A listing of all 300 Scholars can be found here; a total of 1,760 students around the country entered the competition this year, which is owned and produced by Society for Science.

Congratulations to Homestead student author Rishab Borah, "The Door to Inferna" author was released on October 20, 2020 through Three Rooms Press. Please CLICK HERE to enjoy the recorded author event that took place on October 21, 2020!

Homestead High School students participated in the prestigious SSVSTC competition in March.  The following students were prize winners: 

Vivek Bharati, 10th grade (John Shelby, Advisor) Deep Learning System to Detect Sleeping Position Outside Stressors and Alert for Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. 1st Award, Physical Science and Engineering Category.

Anushka Sanyal, 11th grade (Jessica Wakefield, Advisor) Intronic RNA as a Therapeutic Target in Neurodegeneration: A Multipronged Study of RNA Lariat Debranching Enzyme DBR1.  Grand Prize - Best of Championship - Biological Sciences - Qualified to be a Regeneron ISEF Finalist.  1st Award, RRI Biological Science and Engineering Category.

Josh Sanyal, 11th grade (Sam Fung, Advisor) Weakly Supervised LSTM RNNs for Longitudinal Breast Cancer Recurrence Prediction via Unstructured Clinical Narratives.  Grand Prize - Best of Championship - Physical Sciences - Qualified to be a Regeneron ISEF Finalist.  1st Award, RRI Physical Science and Engineering Category.

Anirudh Venkatraman, 9th grade (Ed Taylor, Advisor) A Novel Device to Detect Infection of Wounds.  2nd Award, Biological Science and Engineering Category.

Congratulations to these students, and best of luck to Vivek, Anushka, and Josh, who have qualified for the California Science and Engineering Fair!

Congratulations to Homestead High School students Arnuv Tandon and Arnav Kulkarni whose project RemoteTA was one of 89 winners in the #BuildforCOVID19 Hackathon!

RemoteTA is an online volunteering platform allowing high school students to remotely volunteer with elementary school teachers and help teachers create the digital resources needed to teach online during COVID-19 school closures. Students act as “remote teacher’s assistants”, helping teachers complete various online projects. A full description of RemoteTA is available on the #BuildforCOVID19 Hackathon website. Watch Arnuv and Arnav's project submission video online.

Hosted by the WHO, Google, Microsoft and other prominent tech companies, the #BuildforCOVID19 Hackathon provided an opportunity for developers around the world to come together and tackle challenges related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Innovators around the world were encouraged to use technologies of their choice across a range of suggested themes and challenge areas—some sourced through health partners including the World Health Organization and scientists from the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.

Homestead High School Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) started the new year with a victory at the 2020 Bay Section Leadership Conference (BSLC).   Over 100 Homestead students competed, 83 students placed in the top 10 and a total of 15 first places out of 38 competitions. 67 Homestead students qualified to compete at the State Leadership Conference which will be held in Ontario, CA from April 23-26.

Read the full press release here!

HHS’s Mock Trial team defeated 20 other county teams in 6 courtroom competitions at San Jose Superior Court to advance to finals on Feb. 25. This achievement is a first in the team’s history. Congratulations to Homestead’s talented and hard-working team!

Team Captains: Katie Rizkalla, Roma Bedekar, Sahil Venkatesan

Abby Berwick, Atharv Patil, Brevin Reed, Catherine Zhang, Clarissa Gao, Emily Tumacder, Haritha Muthukumar, Hasith Basnayake, Jiyong Shim, Kelsey Shan, Macy Li, Mayuri Hebbar, Priya Hariharan, Sadia Fathima

Susan Wilson, Advisor. Coaches: Pedro Naveiras, Ron Kharmach. Jay Venkatesan (parent volunteer)

Congratulations to the Homestead Robotics Team for receiving the “Innovation Moonshot Award” for most Innovative mechanism and programming at CalGames 2019 at Woodside HS.