Amador Senior Among Intel's International Science & Engineering Fair Participants

Pleasanton resident and Amador Valley High School Senior Hari Rallapalli was among the 1,500 high school students who competed last week at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world's largest high school science fair.

The fair, which was held in San Jose, featured projects ranging from animal sciences to astronomy.

Rallapalli, 18, has been a finalist two years in a row, but did not win a top prize last week. His project featured a  low-cost detection and tracking device for certain types of cancer.

"I do the best I can and I have fun doing it," he said about his projects. "I enjoy every minute of it."

At last year's Intel science fair, Rallapalli created a low-cost detector for Bisphenol-A (BPA), and won a $25,000 prize from Agilent Technologies.

His project also won first place in the Physics category at the Tri-Valley Science and Engineering Fair Awards. In 2008 he won awards at both fairs for creating a low-cost total internal reflection fluorescence microscope.

Rallapalli said he often worked 12 to 13 hours a day on his projects, after putting in a full day at school. But he said he sees them less as work and more as a labor of love.

At Amador, Rallapalli has been a member of the Science Olympiad and co-founder of the Pleasanton Science League. He was also a Varsity Track and Field athlete and a member of a local improvisational acting troupe.

Rallapalli attributed much of his academic success to his parents, who migrated from India in 1987. He said he was genetically programmed to win science fairs: His father, Prasad, won national science competitions in India, and had his own science lab in his house. Prasad, who is today a computer engineer at Yahoo Inc., stayed up one night running a statistic for his son until six in the morning.

Hari's mother, Suchi, is a special education teacher in Fremont. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Special Education. Hari said he learned the values of patience and perseverance from his mother. Hari also has a sister, Sumana, who is fourteen years old and attends Amador Valley High School.

"My family had a hand in everything I did," said Rallapalli. "I couldn't possibly have accomplished so much without them."

The Rallapalli family moved to Pleasanton in 1999. Hari's love of science began during his first year at Amador Valley High, when he got into a conversation with his biology teacher about the HIV virus and how it develops.

"She suggested I might be interested in biomedical engineering," said Rallapalli, "And I kind of fell in love with it."

Rallapalli said he finds parallels between scientific and cooking experiments; he said he likes to try out recipes with different ingredients. He once made peanut butter and vinegar brownies.

"It ended up tasting really nice. Those two things didn't seem to go together but they went together fine," he said.

Rallapalli said the greatest sacrifice he made for his scientific achievements was not having the social experience of many other high school students.

"I sometimes regret not hanging out with my friends enough," he said. "But I really like science." 

For college, Rallapalli is currently deciding between the biomedical engineering programs at U.C. Davis and Georgia Tech. Eventually, he plans to do research in medicine or biomedical engineering.

"We could not be more proud of Hari's many talents, hard work and accomplishments," said his father, Prasad Rallapalli. "His focus and motivation comes from within."

Rahul Doraiswami, a junior at Foothill High School, presented and won fourth place at the fair. Doraiswami's project was about cancer diagnosis using metabolic fingerprint analysis.