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Research Symposium

The annual Harker Research Symposium showcases the discoveries of Harker's young scientists and alumni, honors the work of career scientists and entrepreneurs, and celebrates Silicon Valley's innovative spirit.

Research Symposium

Saturday, April 11, 2020 | "Robotics and Automation"

The research symposium, held each year in the spring on the upper school campus for the entire Harker community, includes displays of Harker students' often award-winning projects, talks by alumni involved in research, and corporate exhibitors.

Teacher experimenting with fire

Symposium Program Includes

  • Dozens of talks by Siemens, Synopsys and Regeneron participants
  • Talks by Harker alumni
  • More than 50 poster sessions by middle and upper school students
  • Workshops on technical writing, research internships and research competitions
  • Interactive displays by corporate exhibitors

Welcome sign

How You Can Participate

The Harker Research Symposium is for the entire preschool through grade 12 Harker community, but we welcome outside organizations as exhibitors - come showcase your products!

keynote speaker on stage

Keynote Speakers

Sponsored by Harker's upper school science department and organized by Harker's WiSTEM Club (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ), the event has drawn top names in technology, including Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy; Salman Khan of Khan Academy; Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore; Dr. Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of AI/ML at Google Cloud, Jeff Dean, Google's senior fellow on the Google Brain Team, and Andrew Beck, co-founder and CEO of Path AI.

This year's keynote speakers are Jonathan Sorger, vice president, research, Intuitive Surgical; Chelsea Finn, assistant professor, Stanford University computer science department and robotics research scientist, Google Brain; and Ryan Calo, associate professor, School of Law and faculty co-director of the Tech Policy Lab, University of Washington.

exhibitor booth

Corporate Exhibitors

Previous exhibitors have included Autodesk, HP, Microsoft, eBay, IBM, Ericcson, Google/YouTube, Marvell Semiconductor, Nvidia, Tesla and Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center.

View 2020 Corporate Exhibitors

Student presenting her project

Student Abstracts

The research symposium celebrates the curiosity, scientific thinking and communications skills of Harker students in grades 8-12. Poster sessions and formal talks demonstrate high caliber student research and world-class science and academic programs at Harker.

Student using interactive screen

About the Research Symposium

The annual Harker Research Symposium showcases the discoveries of Harker's young scientists and alumni, honors the work of career scientists and entrepreneurs, and celebrates Silicon Valley's innovative spirit.

Science department chair Anita Chetty, advisor for WiSTEM (Women in STEM), capitalizes on Harker's proximity to world class technology development to boost the symposium beyond a showcase for student projects into the realm of opening visitors' minds to new ideas as they emerge.

The Harker Research Symposium typically draws crowds of more than 700 people. "Every classroom is standing-room only," Chetty said. Watch this space for updates!