Top Ten Finish for SCVTHS Science Olympiad Team

Somerset County Vocational and Technical High School (SCVTHS) was well represented at the New Jersey Regional Science Olympiad competition held at NJIT on January 8th. Students enrolled in the Health Occupations, Mechatronics, Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing (MEAM), and the Academy for Health and Medical Sciences competed in events that required them to show off their problem solving, critical thinking, and technology skills.

The SCVTHS team was led by captains and Hillsborough residents Kushi Rao, Srishti Kishore, Rian Patel and Chaitanyaa Vyas. In addition to advising and motivating their teammates, the captains also registered for competitions, communicated with event organizers, assigned teams, and organized fundraisers.

On the day of the event, students broke into their smaller teams and competed in a dozen different events. Some events are designed to test subject area knowledge, while others require practical application of a concept or the development of strategies to fix a problem. Fields of study such as robotics,  ecology, entomology, biology, geology, and design are among the many disciplines featured throughout the competition.

At the end of the day, all scores were tallied and the combined SCVTHS team finished 7th out of a total of twenty-four schools. Top finishes for the sub-teams included Saanvi Trivedi of Hillsborough and Margaret Kim of Somerset, who earned third place in Dynamic Planet, and Anya Konduru of Hillsborough and Charlotte McLaughlin of Warren, who finished in fourth place in Disease Detectives.

Science Olympiad is a national organization, founded in 1984, that promotes STEM studies by conducting challenge events at over four hundred  tournaments in all fifty states. Over 6,000 students participate each year, giving them the opportunity to explore pathways in engineering, biology, math, chemistry and other disciplines by providing fun, engaging, and challenging competitions.

Members of the SCVTHS Science Olympiad team: (back row, l-r) Charlotte McLaughlin of Warren, Bhumija Grandhe of Bridgewater, Siyaa Choudhary of Somerset, Saanvi Trivedi of Hillsborough, SCVTHS instructor Pratima Patil, Kushi Rao of Hillsborough, Srishti Kishore of Hillsborough, Guru Puduru of Bridgewater, Rian Patel of Hillsborough (front row, l-r): Anya Konduru of Hillsborough, Anagha Manjrekar of Branchburg, Margaret Kim of Somerset, Christopher Dugan of Branchburg, Abhay Naidu of Bridgewater, Mithun Chigurupati of Bridgewater.