Blair Magnet News: Summer 2020

Eighteen seniors won National Merit Scholarships:

• • Awarded by National Merit Scholarship Corporation: Marie Brodsky, Lintaro Donavan, Amanda Liu, and Emmy Song (MCPS)

  • Corporate-Sponsored Scholarship: Adam Levav (MCPS)

  • Scholarship sponsored by the University of Maryland: Simon Chervenak, Liam DeVoe, Joey Kim, Daniel Levy, Kelley Li, June Lee, Tarun Mattikalli (MCPS)

  • Scholarships sponsored by other colleges: Rachel Dey (U.Chicago), Andrew Hu (Vanderbilt), Josephine James-Le (Tulane), Jennifer Ren (Northwestern), Jesse Silverberg (Case Western), Ashley Wilson (Univ. of Rochester) (MCPS)

More awards and recognition:

• • Elia Safir and Lillian Zhou were Regional Finalists in the Toshiba Exploravision Competition

  • Vivian Li was one of the top winners of The New York Times's Student STEM Writing Contest for her essay, "An Unexpected Dinner Guest: Marine Plastic Pollution Hides a Neurological Toxin in Our Food"

  • Team Blair Girls Go (Julie Gelfond, Kelley Li, and Alexa Hunleth, and Vivian Li) placed 7th nationally in the 2020 Girls Go Cyberstart Competition.

  • Blair's team finished in 8th place in the online ACLS All-Star Competition. Three students (Clarence Lam, Jason Liu, and Steven Su) finished in the top 20 individually. Freshman Solomon Ucko finished in 7th place in the intermediate division.

  • Dhruv Pai and Matt Casertano were recognized in The Washington Post: "Two local teens grocery shopped for their grandparents. Soon it became a national volunteer effort." (WETA)

  • Ivy Liang and Sophia Weng helped to organize the inteGIRLS Puzzle Contest, an online competition for teen girls. Several Magnet students were involved in founding inteGIRLS, which recently won a STEM Action Grant.

  • Justin Chen, Se Yong Park, Timothy Qian, Jesse Silverberg, Christopher Tong, Gabriel Wu, and Daniel Yuan qualified to take the 2020 USA Physics Olympiad exam, which was canceled this year. (pdf)

  • Christopher Tong and Caleb Zhao qualified to take the 2020 U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad exam, with Christopher Tong winning High Honors. (capitalchemist.org) (acs.org-pdf)

  • In the online 2020 USA Mathematical Olympiad, Daniel Yuan earned an Honorable Mention (pdf), and Kevin Wu was a winner of the Junior Mathematical Olympiad (pdf)

COVID-19:

• • Prayag Gordy and Adam Chazan created their own Maryland COVID-19 Tracker.

  • Silver Chips: MCPS is holding its first semester entirely online

  • Blair facemasks are available for purchase online through MCPS.