San Jose, CA (PRWEB) April 11, 2014
Champion School student, Shubham Banerjee, has won the top prize given by Synopsys Outreach Foundation’s (SOF) Next Breakthrough in Science and Engineering for his project Braigo, a low cost Braille printer. Champion, one of the smallest middle schools to participate, had seven students who won awards at the Synopsys Science Championship. Champion school also had 2 projects that competed in the final round of the Synopsys Outreach Foundation’s Next Breakthrough in Science and Engineering in a pool of a total of 8 finalists which were chosen from a field of hundreds of projects. To provide a further perspective, while Champion had 25% of the projects that reached the final round, Champion’s middle school student population is less than 0.1% of the total population of all of the school’s that participated at the Synopsys Science Fair.
According to Muna Khanna, the principal of Champion School, “We strive to give our students as many opportunities to find their passions and showcase their talents as possible, be it in science competitions, math competitions, speech & debate competitions, sports or performance arts. At the foundation of these intellectual pursuits is a rigorous and world class education. Based on our surveys and research, the academic progress of an average Champion student, particularly in STEM subjects probably ranks among the top 0.1% of all students in the US. We are very proud of each of our students who participated as well as the teachers and staff who nurtured their ideas/interest and supported them.”
Niloy Banerjee, the father of Shubam Banerjee who won the Synopsys Outreach Foundation’s top award for the Next Breakthrough in Science and Engineering states, “We are grateful to Champion for providing my son, Shubham with a spark to excel in whatever he does since he joined the school in sixth grade. I feel the environment at Champion School and all the one-on-one attention provided by the school have helped him thrive academically and at the same time be innovative in developing creative ideas to solve real world problems. He has shed his reserved nature and now confidently participates in math, debate and science competitions.”
The projects that won awards at the Synopsys Championship included a low cost Braille printer, a civil engineering project on a better Truss design for a bridge, and a text analysis engine written in JAVA that can predict the author of an article based on characterizing the writing style of each of the authors. The text analysis engine, which was also a SOF award finalist, continues to be enhanced. The school and the students plan to release the project into the public domain so that others are able to benefit from it and contribute to making it more general purpose and more robust.
Masashi Tayama, the father of Kazuki Tayama, a finalist for the Synopsys Outreach Foundation’s top award for the Next Breakthrough in Science and Engineering adds, “Since he joined Champion less than a year ago, our son Kazuki has received numerous opportunities and extra-ordinary amounts of support to participate in intellectually challenging projects and competitions, as well as work in high caliber teams. He is thriving both academically as well as in the application of those skills on challenging real world problems. We are very proud of our son and thank the school for seeing his talent and helping him explore his interests and reach his potential.”
About Champion School
Champion school offers one of the most advanced STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs in the US. For example, it is not uncommon for 100% of continuing fourth graders in a given school year to start learning JAVA programming and learn either Pre-Algebra or Algebra-1. These subjects are often not introduced in most schools until 7th or 8th grade. Champion School offers a child centered approach to education where a child’s abilities are not underestimated and the uniqueness of every child is celebrated, unshackled from a cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to education. At Champion, each student gets an unmatched level of extra help in school, while receiving less than half the amount of typical homework. Champion student also participate in a rich set of co-curricular activities and projects during the school day to foster their creative, problem solving, strategic thinking, communication, and leadership skills.
Media Contact:
Sandeep Khanna
408-973-8696
admin(at)championschool(dot)org
http://www.ChampionSchool.org
