Intel Ends Sponsorship of Talent Search

[TooOld4School]

Not a single blonde in the 2014 group. The bias is shocking. The 2012 blonde is just a token, must be a product of affirmative action.

[fireandrain]

There is so a blonde – boy in back row, center.

" It’s the entirely predictable outcome of Silicon Valley being shaken down by Jesse Jackson, for its lack of workforce diversity."

I feel so … naive? innocent? When I saw the story in the Times, this reason never crossed my mind.

Seriously – Intel ended its support because the winners are not black or Hispanic?

I still remember when it was Westinghouse.

[LOUKYDAD]

Different but similar competition (Siemens). Six kids from one “school” selected as semi-finalists.

https://wkunews.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2014/10/17/gatton-siemens-2014/

“About The Gatton Academy: Established in 2007, The Gatton Academy is Kentucky’s first residential high school for gifted and talented junior and seniors. Gatton Academy students enroll as juniors and are full-time WKU students pursuing their interests in advanced science, technology, engineering and mathematical careers. The Gatton Academy has been named the number one public high school in the United States by The Daily Beast for three consecutive years – 2012, 2013 and 2014”.

Obviously these kids have a lot easier “path” to being competitive in something like this.

[GMTplus7]

Along the lines of Intel abandoning its sponsorship, I’ve noticed that the very selective colleges have downplayed the weight of NMF. I can understand why. Just like the Intel Finalists, the NMFs don’t have the right kind of diversity distribution.

Last year, I crunched thru published lists of NMFs, w a focus on school districts w a large sample size. The results are interesting:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1684991-interesting-demographic-glimpse-of-california-national-merit-semifinalists.html

In addition to CA, I also looked at the MA & the Houston HISD public school published lists. What was troubling about the Houston public school list was that for a school district that is more than 60% hispanic, there was not a single obvious-looking hispanic last name. Suprisingly (maybe, not surprisingly) nearly half the list was comprised of obvious-looking asian last names.

When a well-meaning competition doesn’t yield the right kind of results, it’s embarrassing. Therefore, I really wonder if other companies will have much appetite to takeover the Intel sponsorship, because it’s likely to come w Jesse Jackson tagging along. On account of JJ, Intel had to cough up $300 million for an intiative to increase workforce diversity.

[Colorado_mom]

In general I’m all for diversity. But it seems like a STEM competition should be judged by the merits of the project.

[shravas]

What I never understood is how the demographics of Intel STS are so skewed in a way that most other math and science are not. Last time I checked, something like 1/6 semifinalists came from Long Island. And while the kids in Long Island are smart, their representation is much less in contests like USAMO, for example.

[Hunt]

For these big contests, institutional support from the high school seems to be important. The same thing can be observed in the Youngarts program on the arts side.

I’m not aware that the ethnic makeup of the Intel finalists has ever resulted in bad press for Intel, so that explanation isn’t persuasive to me.

[LOUKYDAD]

I wonder if the Reverend has ever himself passed a test in multi variable calculus?

[GMTplus7]

@Hunt

I’m not aware that the ethnic makeup of the Intel finalists has ever resulted in bad press for Intel, so that explanation isn’t persuasive to me.

That’s because it only became an issue last year. Here’s an article on The Oregonian’s website about Jesse Jackson taking on Intel:
“Intel CEO on diversity push: ‘This isn’t rocket science. It’s harder’”

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2015/05/intel_ceo_on_diversity_push_th.html
The photo of the Intel CEO hugging JJ and trying to smile as he is being extorted cracks me up.

Then right under this article is a “Related Stories” link to another news article about how Intel is suddenly quitting its sponsorship:

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2015/09/intel_baffles_education_advoca.html#incart_related_stories

Hardy reported that Intel’s annual expenses for the event total roughly $6 million.

Intel declined to explain its decision to The New York Times and did not immediately respond to a message seeking additional comment.

Unlike Westinghouse, which had divested itself of most of its technological operations when it severed ties with the science fair, Intel remains among the world’s biggest tech companies. The chipmaker reported record revenue last year…

Intel, which employs 18,600 in Washington County, is promoting other tech initiatives including a $300 million push to increase diversity in the tech sector…

Come on @Hunt. You do the PR math…

[NoVADad99]

LOL re Pinewood Derby. I’ve seen too many 10 y.o’s cars looking like something out of a car magazine. I agree with @GMTPlus7 that people who spend all their effort making aerodynamic car bodies and sanding them down to a glossy smooth finish are wasting their time. It’s all about the axles, wheels, and where you place the weights. One year, I just painted the block of wood to look like a school bus and it didn’t do all that bad.

[sorghum]

Back to my original point. Here’s a photo of the final 40. Intel could either impose diversity quotas, or it could cancel the whole show.

They look VERY diverse to me.

[Erin_s_Dad]

Along the lines of Intel abandoning its sponsorship, I’ve noticed that the very selective colleges have downplayed the weight of NMF. I can understand why. Just like the Intel Finalists, the NMFs don’t have the right kind of diversity distribution.

Very selective colleges have never really used NMF for admission from my understanding. They get too many students of that caliber that NMF is not a differentiator. I know some of the 1000 students who make NMSF but not NMF are those who don’t bother filling out the paperwork because they are only going for elite schools where it doesn’t matter.

[GMTplus7]

Last year’s finalists:
https://member.societyforscience.org/document.doc?id=520

** Arshavsky, Alec Vadim **
East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, NC

• Automatic Characterization of Donor Tissue for Corneal Transplantation Surgery *

** Camenzind, Kathy **
California High School, San Ramon, CA

• Quantifying Trapping Forces in a Simplified Optical Tweezers Setup *

** Chen, Eric S. **
Canyon Crest Academy, San Diego, CA

• Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic *

** Chen, Steven **
Westwood High School, Austin, TX

• On the Surface Tension of Entropic Droplets in Dynamically Metastable Liquids *

** Clarke, John Anthony **
Regis High School, New York, NY

• High-Energy X-ray Emission in the Jovian Magnetosphere: A Feasibility Study for the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) *

** Coraor, Aron **
Huntington High School, Huntington, NY

• Pressure Dependent Azeotropic Melting Relations in the Mg2SiO4-Fe2SiO4-NaAlSi3O8-CaAl2Si2O8 System: a Critical Role in Lunar Highlands Formation? *

** Daga, Soham **
Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY

• Using Google Trends to Enhance Predictive Models of Mortgage Delinquency to Mitigate Risk in the Loan Lending Process *

** Datta, Shaun **
Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, MD

• Saturated Nuclear Matter in the Large Nc and Heavy Quark Limits of Quantum Chromodynamics *

** Davey, Neil **
Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, MD

• Early Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Through the Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells Using Drop-Based Microfluidics *

** Freed, Benjamin **
Governor Thomas Johnson High School, Frederick, MD

• Identification of Novel Regulatory Mechanisms of the K-Ras Oncoprotein *

** Guha, Anubhav **
Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, NY

• Discovery of Rare Earth Oxide Nanoparticles as Agents for Prolonging Fluorescence Imaging in Biological and Other Systems: Fluorescence Studies from Single Molecules and Dispersions *

** Homma, Yushi **
Carmel High School, Carmel, IN

• Asymptotics of Two-Point Correlation Functions for the Zeros of Random Polynomials *

** Kang, Joyce Blossom **
Brentwood High School, Brentwood, TN

• Development of a High-performance Hybrid Supercapacitor on CF Cloth Using 3D Nano-Architectured Electrodes Comprised of Aligned CNTs Coated with Pseudocapacitive MnO2 Nanoparticles *

** Kong, Angela Xiangyue **
Lynbrook High School, San Jose, CA

• The Transcription Factor Bcl11b Regulates Mammary Stem Cell Self-Renewal and Quiescence Partially Through Cell Cycle Progression Inhibitor CDKN1a/p21 *

** Kuszmaul, William Henry **
Lexington High School, Lexington, MA

• A New Approach to Enumerating Statistics Modulo n *

** Lee, Kevin **
University High School, Irvine, CA

• Strongly Coupled Electromechanical Modeling of the Heart in Moving Domains Using the Phase-Field Method *

** Liu, Charles Xin **
Henry M. Gunn High School, Palo Alto, CA

• Integrated Meta-analysis of 64 Diseases Identifies Novel Relationship Between Systemic Sclerosis and Systemic Lupus erythematosus *

** Maiti, Esha **
California High School, San Ramon, CA

• Stochastic Monte Carlo Simulations to Determine Breast Cancer Metastasis Rates and Tumor Distribution from Patient Survival Data *

** Mehta, Rahul Siddharth **
The University of Chicago Laboratory High School, Chicago, IL

• A New Max-Flow Algorithm for Sparse Networks *

** Meier, Joshua Abraham **
Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, Hackensack, NJ

• Control of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Aging by Modulation of Mitochondrial DNA Deletions *

** Merrill, Anne **
Greenwich High School, Greenwich, CT

• Comparative Suppression of Soil-Borne Pathogens via Earthworm Bioturbation of Natural and Man-Made Biochars *

** Michaels, Lisa P. **
Plano West Senior High School, Plano, TX

• Pan-Neuronal Over-Expression of the GCLc Gene to Mitigate Redox Stress and Mitochondrial ETC Complex  Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease *

** Misra, Sreyas **
The Harker School, San Jose, CA

• Design and Characterization of a Novel Single-headed and Hand-held PET Camera Using 511 keV Photon Collimation via Compton Scatter *

** Mocz, Viola **
Mililani High School, Mililani, HI

• The Mass Ratio of Elementary Particles from Helicotoroidal Topology *

** Ng, Natalie **
Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, CA

• Advancing Precision Medicine: MicroRNA Prognostic Signatures and Prediction Models for Distant Metastasis Free Survival in Breast Cancer *

** Pang, Emily **
Dougherty Valley High School, San Ramon, CA

• The Opposing Roles of Tumor Suppressive cC1qR and Oncoprotein gC1qR as Mechanisms for Inhibiting Cancer Pathogenesis *

** Park, Jiho **
University High School, Irvine, CA

• Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Aromatase: Implications for Novel Drug Design *

** Paskov, Ivan Spassimirov **
Edgemont High School, Scarsdale, NY

• Predicting Cancer Drug Response Using Nuclear Norm Multi-Task Learning *

** Pereira, Brianna **
Academy for Medical Science Technology, Hackensack, NJ

• CXCR4/SDF-1α Signaling as a Target of Microenvironmental Regulation of Metastasis in NSCLC *

** Pulak, Thabit **
Richardson High School, Richardson, TX

• Affordable Home-based Bio-sand Arsenic Water Filter and Rapid Arsenic Water Test Using Nanotechnology *

** Rahman, Zarin Ibnat **
Brookings High School, Brookings, SD

• The At-Risk Maturing Brain: Effects of Stress Paradigms on Mood, Memory and Cognition in Adolescents and the Role of the Prefrontal Cortex *

** Saini, Ajay **
Acton-Boxborough Regional High School, Acton, MA

• Predictive Modeling of Opinion and Connectivity Dynamics in Social Networks *

** Sakowitz, Sara **
The Brearley School, New York, NY

• A Novel Approach for Metastatic Breast Cancer Therapy: Pharmacological Inhibition of EZH2 Histone Methyl Transferase Activity Suppresses Cancer Stem Cells and Induces Epithelial Phenotype *

** Seong, David **
Lexington High School, Lexington, MA

• Novel Use of Mutant Huntingtin Haplotype 3’UTR Sequence to Discover miRNAs Targeting Mutant Huntingtin Gene Causing Huntington’s Disease *

** Shankar, Vishnu **
Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, CA

• The 3D Structure of Human DP Prostaglandin G-protein Coupled Receptor Bound to Selective Antagonists from GEnSeMBLE Predictions *

** Shi, Jessica **
Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, MD

• The Speeds of Families of Intersection Graphs *

** Shin, Kaitlyn **
Jericho Senior High School, Jericho, NY

• Photon and Positron Emission from Primordial Black Hole Clusters *

** Srinivasan, Anand **
Roswell High School, Roswell, GA

• RNNScan: Eukaryotic Gene Prediction via Recurrent Neural Networks Utilizing Local-Feature Extraction *

** Thakker, Parth **
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, NC

• Design, Assembly, and Optimization of Novel ZnxSeAgy Biocompatible Quantum Dot Sensitized Solar Cells *

I love the titles of their research projects. Pinewood Derby…

[fireandrain]

If it is true that Intel is no longer funding this program because winners are primarily Asian, then they deserve even more negative PR attention from Jackson and the media.

[NoVADad99]

Maybe the Chinese can pick it up and name it the Huawei-Alibaba
Asian Talent Search

[GMTplus7]

@fireandrain

If it is true that Intel is no longer funding this program because winners are primarily Asian, then they deserve even more negative PR attention from Jackson and the media.

Uh, I think you don’t quite grasp JJ’s agenda.

http://fortune.com/2014/12/20/jesse-jackson-talks-diversity-in-silicon-valley/

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson… His latest challenge is tackling diversity at notoriously homogenous Silicon Valley companies. Earlier this year Jackson and his organization, Rainbow Push Coalition, pressured tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and eBay to publish reports detailing their employee demographics. The results were predictably dismal: Lots of white and Asian males, and relatively few women, blacks and Hispanics.

The Intel Science Search has a similar problem: Lots of whites and Asians… no blacks and Hispanics.

[PatentPending]

@GMTplus7 As someone intimately familiar with the situation, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

[Hunt]

The problem is that when no sensible reason for a decision is given, people will supply their own explanations based on whatever circumstantial evidence they perceive. I confess that what I expected was an opinion that it was being discontinued because “too many Asians” were winning. I don’t believe that’s likely to be the real reason, just as I don’t think “not enough URMs” is likely to be the reason. But what is it?

Here’s the best speculative theory I have: somebody at Intel said, “Why are we spending six million dollars annually on a program that primarily benefits a small number of students who have access to excellent opportunities and resources, when that money could be better spent providing resources to a lot more students who aren’t getting them at all?”

My alternate, more cynical, theory: Top Intel guy: “What do we get out of it?” Program manager: “Uh, good will?” Top guy: “Not six million bucks’ worth. Drop it.”

[PatentPending]

@Hunt I agree with you 100% and wish I was a liberty to say more. All I can say is that it has nothing to do with too many Asians winning or Jesse Jackson.

[californiaaa]

Sad story! Diversity, diversity …

Where is diversity in our schools? Where are MALE teachers? Colleges have far too many females, almost all colleges have more females than males. STEM was the last opportunity to find a good date … now STEM is under attack.

If all colleges would turn female-dominated, where would my DDs date? English majors? Social Sciences? Ethnic Studies? What would girls do?