Skip To Main Content

Potomac Stories

US Spring Concert Recap

The Upper School Spring Concert was an entertaining evening of music that featured more than 100 performers and six ensembles. The audience enjoyed a moving choral setting of the poem Where Your Bare Foot Walks, the motet O magnum mysterium by Spanish composer Tomas Luis de Victoria, and others.

The Concert Handbell ensemble shared multiple rhythmic pieces entitled Friend of Mine, Bound for South Australia, and the Bruno Mars hit Grenade. The Honors Handbell Ensemble closed out the first half with Rondo Borincano, Fancye, and Britney Spears’ critically acclaimed Toxic.

The String Orchestra performed a piece by Mozart, followed by John Williams’ Theme from Schindler’s List. Faculty member Mr. Nicholas Tkach once again had one of his original compositions on the program, this one entitled Dramatic Overture from his opera Antigone. The string orchestra finished with the classic 12-bar blues Green Onions featuring many soloists.

Fresh off their NYC tour, Concert Band first performed After Pandora, a piece of contrasting themes before closing their portion of the performance with the title theme from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods. Jazz Band’s first piece was the Grammy-award winning song No Time to Die before bringing the house down with the jazz standard Take Five, written by Paul Desmond for the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Photos from the evening can be found here.

Search Stories

POTOMAC STORIES

SERC Student News

Kate Choi ’25 competed in the 69th annual Fairfax County Regional Science and Engineering Fair last Sunday, winning a special award from the Biophysical Society for her research “Improving Racial Equity in Skin Cancer Detection via Artificial Intelligence.” She was also selected as the grand prize winner for her category, which helped her advance to compete in the 2024 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in May in Los Angeles. At the local fair, over 400 students presented their research projects in a wide variety of science and engineering fields. Projects were judged by over 150 professionals and 40 professional organizations and businesses. !

Congrats to Arav Bhargava on competing in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (STS) 2024 a few weeks ago. In its 83rd year, the competition has consistently identified young innovators who will become tomorrow’s STEM leaders. Arav and the other 39 finalists were honored during an award ceremony emceed by American broadcaster Soledad O’Brien. Congratulations to both students. 

JSHS Regional Finalists Named

Students from Potomac’s Science and Engineering Research Center (SERC) program have been selected as regional finalists for the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS). The students began their projects during their sophomore or junior years and worked on them throughout the summer of 2023. 

Ben Runde’s ‘24 now published research focuses on using AI for early Alzheimer’s detection. Read the piece in the journal MDPI Brain Sciences. Arav Bhargava ‘24 developed a universal socket for prosthetic limbs that can be produced using a 3D printer, potentially reducing the cost significantly. He will present his research during this week’s Regeneron competition. Max Zeldes ‘24 explored making improvements to electroencephalography-based imagined speech brain-computer interfaces. Kate Choi ‘25 investigated ways to improve racial equity in skin cancer detection and presented her findings during regionals. Natalia Vilela ‘24 is researching a drug typically used for cancer treatment to assess its ability to prevent allergy-related anaphylaxis. Her work, also recently published, is available to read in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. She presented her research to allergists from all over the world during the 2024 American Association of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting. Congratulations to our SERC students; we are very proud of their accomplishments!

Taylor Burris '24 continued her run of success, finishing fourth at the Harvard National High School Invitational Forensics Tournament in extemp, was runner-up at Metro Extemp Finals, and added the Metro championship in impromptu to her list of accomplishments. Placing at Harvard is difficult as nearly 5,000 students from 462 U.S. and international high schools traveled to this year's tournament.

Sebastian Gardner '25 semi-finaled at Harvard in congressional debate, matching our highest finish at the Harvard debates in five years. Gardner and Armaan Sethi '26 both won leadership awards at Harvard.  Ethan Maher '25 was invited to the prestigious Harvard Congressional round-robin tournament the day before the main event. Alexander Bauer '25 joined Sethi and Maher with a quarter-final finish. Graeme Evans '24 also advanced to the quarter-finals for Potomac in humorous interpretation at Harvard.

The speech students only had a few days to recover from Harvard as they faced the challenges at the WACFL Speech Metro Finals this past Saturday, winning team sweeps for the metro schools in Northern Virginia.  

Burris' Metro title in impromptu speaking led the speech effort. Isabella Chumpitaz '24 was the runner-up in oral interpretation. Charlotte Ross '26, Meredith Vorndran '25, Burris, and eighth grader Anika Agrawal qualified for two events for the NCFL tournament. Finally, congratulations to Thomas Shanmugam '26 and William Shanmugam '27 on their wins at the DCUDL public forum tournament this past weekend!  

AI Assembly Tackles Hot Topics

On Tuesday, the newly formed Upper School AI student committee hosted an assembly focused on the potential benefits and challenges of generative artificial intelligence. Students moderated a panel of three leaders in AI – U.S. Congressman Don Beyer, Professor Brian Hall, and Dr. Sarah Murphy Gray – who spoke to this technology's influence in politics, sports, defense, business, social media, and beyond. All three described themselves as "AI optimists," with a real sense of how AI could transform the world positively, but they guided students not to lose touch with the humanities as we learn these tools. Student moderators Kasim Khapra '25, India Cairncross '25, and Arav Bhargava '24 demonstrated real leadership in facilitating a discussion with the panelists and soliciting questions from the audience. This assembly was first and foremost student-generated, and it was exciting to watch their work over several months pay off. View photos from the discussion.

Romeo and Juliet Captivates 

Congratulations to the cast and crew of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Their performances over the weekend showed the wide range of talent here at Potomac. Read the preview of the show from The Current, written by Trevor Nelson ’27 and Brandon Mayrhofer ’27. Please view the photo gallery.

Learning About Biodiversity on Smithsonian Field Trip

Students in the Biodiversity & Conservation class traveled to the Natural History Museum to participate in the Reefs Unleashed program led by museum staff. Students learned about Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS), a nondestructive tool that Smithsonian scientists use to measure the biodiversity of coral reefs all over the world, then observed and analyzed data from images of ARMS plates to better understand the impact of ocean acidification on coral reefs. Applying their knowledge of marine ecosystems to their observations, students developed hypotheses to explain the differences in reef biodiversity.