May, 1, 2002
Jennifer Balakrishnan of Harvest Christian Academy in Barrigada, Guam has been awarded the second $1000 National High School Calculus Student Award.
The award comes from calculus.org, based at the University of California at Davis, Williams College, and Wake Forest University. Frank Morgan of Williams College will award Jennifer the prize Saturday (May 4, 2002) during a special ceremony at the 2002 American Math Olympiad in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jennifer was nominated by math teacher John A. Beaton. Her school principal is Keith Williams.
In 1999 Jennifer had a science fair project in which she developed conversion formulas for an elliptical coordinate system, generalizing the polar coordinate system. This project won fourth prize at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, California in May, 2001. She also has participated in numerous other activities, including the American Invitational Mathematics Examination and the United States Math Olympiad in 2000 and 2001, Canada/USA Math Camp during the summers of 1999 and 2000 and the Research Science Institute at MIT in 2001. Other honors Jennifer has won include being a Siemens-Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition Finalist, an Intel Science Talent Search Finalist, and a Grand Prize Winner of the USA Mathematical Talent Search.
Jennifer praised her mathematics instructor as follows. "Mr. Beaton has helped me greatly through my mathematics learning--primarily, by being a wonderful teacher, and secondly, by letting me pursue independent-study classes in higher mathematics."
Runners up, Zachary John Abernathy (West Forsyth High School, Clemmons, NC), Brandon Batista (Monmouth Regional High School, Tinton Falls, NJ), Siva Kalyan (Littlebrook Elementary School, Princeton, NJ), and April Tam (Miami Springs Senior High School, Miami Springs, FL), as well as Jennifer receive the Scientific Notebook software package, donated by MacKichan Software.
A list of previous winners and runners up can be found at Past Winners.
For more information, contact: Prof. Hugh Howards, Wake Forest University, (336) 723-0293, ecalculusaward@yahoo.com.
Return to www.calculus.org