Annual Stevens Creek Trail race scheduled for this weekend

The Friends of Stevens Creek Trail is slated to host its annual Trailblazer Race on Sunday, Sept. 24.

The event features 5K and 10K races, as well as a 3-mile walk. Each of the courses start and end on the Stevens Creek Trail and participants will meet at Microsoft's campus, 1045 La Avenida St.

The courses for the 5K and 10K races go north into Shoreline Park, while the 3-mile walk course heads south on the trail to the Evelyn Avenue bridge and back.

Money raised from the event will benefit the Friends of Stevens Creek Trail.

The group was recently recognized with a city proclamation in honor of its 30th anniversary, which Mayor Alison Hicks presented at a Sept. 12 Mountain View City Council meeting.

For more information on the Trailblazer Race and to sign up, visit stevenscreektrail.org.

Local students honored as National Merit semifinalists

Over 50 students attending high school in Mountain View, Los Altos or Los Altos Hills were named as National Merit semifinalists earlier this month.

The local honorees are among over 16,000 semifinalists nationally, representing the highest scorers in each state on the 2022 PSAT. The number of semifinalists from each state is proportional to the state's share of the nation's graduating high school seniors.

Roughly 95% of semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, about half of whom will receive a National Merit scholarship, according to a press release from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Finalists are expected to be notified in February.

The local semifinalists are:

• Mountain View High School: Aarush Agarwal, Brandon C. Ang, Samika D. Arun, James L. Bankhead, Preston Bhat, Leah H. Bilstad, Chloe N. Chan, Anna J. Corson, Jazlyn Dias, Madeline L. Kamprath, Sabina Anne K. Leaver, Daniel W. Lief, Alyssa L. Ong, Tim J. Van Antwerpen and Emma J. Zhang

• Los Altos High School: Pranav I. Butaney, Paula Casares-Iglesias, Michael A. Cheilek-Klaiber, Isabelle Y. Chen, Adit Chintamaneni, Samuel W. Cousins, Jennifer A. Cruden, Audrey M. Fan, Amanda L. Guo, Nikash Gupta, Matthew J. Kim, Bridget G. Liu, Julia T. Mao, Manonmani Raffill, Ryan J. Wang and Sabrina Yen-Ko

• St. Francis High School: Annmary Antony, Sandeep S. Bajamahal, Kylie Chen, Nikhil S. Dewitt, Lian Elsa Linton, Kasper Halevy, Anirudh S. Kannan, Medha G. Mahanta, Paree Merchant, Ishan Pachauri, Kavya S. Peela, Ridhima Seth, Niva Shirsekar, Ayush Singh, Rajesh Veera, Justin Wang, Valerie Wong and Alexander D. Xia

• Pinewood School: Emma Hwang and Meghana A. Simhadri

• Khan Lab School: Jay Warrier

St. Francis senior finalist in international STEM video competition

St. Francis High School senior Sophia Tran is one of 15 finalists in the ninth annual Breakthrough Junior Challenge, a STEM video competition.

Over 2,400 students from around the world participated in this year's competition. Applicants each submitted an original video, no more than two minutes in length, to explain a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or math, according to the Breakthrough Junior Challenge's website.

Tran submitted a video about neurotransmitters, which is available to watch on the competition website.

Tran told the Voice that she learned about neurons and neurotransmitters in a psychology class that she took her junior year and was interested in their impact on diseases like Alzheimers.

"When the opportunity to make a video for this competition came up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to raise awareness about increasing research for this certain field, while also sharing a passion of mine with a larger audience," Tran said.

The winner of the competition will receive a $250,000 college scholarship, with a science teacher who inspired them getting $50,000 and their school receiving a new science lab, according to the competition website.

After graduating, Tran said that she is interested in pursuing a pre-med track, majoring in biology.