What is it?
The Penner Group High School Outreach Program is a program of outreach to Orange County high school students in connection with our National Science Foundation contracts. It started with Jeff Chen, then a junior at University High School in Irvine, in 2001 with NSF award CHE-0111557. In addition to Jeff, seven other students were engaged in the program during the five-year period from 2001 to 2006 (see table below). This program was expanded during CHE-0641169 and DMR-0654055 (2006 to 2009) to include a total of eleven new students. During summer 2011 we had a full house of five students working together with us: Yash Desai (UniHigh, Irvine), Melissa Huang (Foothill High, Santa Ana), Cliff Kao (UniHigh, Irvine), Johncarlo Menza (Santa Ana High), Ashley Park (UniHigh, Irvine). This brings to twenty seven the total number of high school students who have pursued independent research projects under the supervision of myself and senior graduate students. This web site has produced visibility for our program beyond the City of Irvine and since 2006 we have attracted students from Newport Beach, Fullerton (2), Costa Mesa, Santa Ana (3), Valencia (2), Aliso Viejo (2), and Mission Viejo.

Pratiksha Thaker from UniHigh, Irvine (left) and Catherine Dong, from Northwood High, Irvine (right)
get their gloved hands dirty in the Penner Lab, summer 2009.

Students engaged in our outreach program often prepare posters for presentation at the Orange County Science Fair (OCSF). These presentations have been well received and as indicated in the Table, several have been selected at OCSF for presentation at the California State Science Fair (CSSF). Irrespective of the degree of success attained by each student in the laboratory, these students have all been enthusiastic and engaged in their research, which occurs under the direct supervision of a senior graduate student in the laboratory.

Ervin Meneses (Santa Ana High Schoool) examines an array of gold nanowires, summer 2010.
Ervin will be a freshman at Union College, Schenectady, New York this fall, 2011.

They're Great!
Two students (Rei Wu and Swetha Kambhampati) competed in the Siemans-Westinghouse Competition (http://www.siemens-foundation.org/competition/.), the most prestigious science competition for high school students in the U.S., and both were recognized as semifinalists. Of the fourteen "graduates" of the Penner Group High School Outreach Program, thirteen have proceed to top-ranked colleges and universities including UC Berkeley (5), Caltech (2), Darmouth (1), Harvard (2), MIT (4), Stanford (1), Union College (1), USC (1), and UCSD(1).

Swetha Kambhampati and Albert Linden are two stars of the Penner Group High School Outreach Program
from University High School, Irvine. Swetha graduated from UniHigh in 2006 and from MIT in 2011.
Albert graduated from UC Berkeley last year.