Two seniors at Thomas Jefferson were among 40 high school seniors named Finalists for the IntelScience Talent Search 2009, a program of the Society for Science and the Public. The competition is America's oldest and most prestigious pre-college science competition. Finalists will travel to Washington, D.C. in March to compete for $530,000 in scholarships, with the top winner receiving a $100,000 scholarship from the Intel Foundation. Each Finalist will receive at least $5,000 in scholarships and a new laptop.

Narendra "Naren" Tallapragada, 17, of Edgewater in Burke was selected for his project, "Determining the Dielectric Function for Crystalline Solids from the "Bottom Up", Using Atomic, Ionic, and Molecular Properties." Naren is the son of Ravi and Jyotsna Tallapragada. His mother is a neo-natologist and his father is an engineering management consultant.

His project took about three months, but he had been working in the field for the past two summers at the MITRE Corp. in McLean.

"If you want to make a circuit or anything that controls light or electricity," Naren said, "you need to be able to control how that light or electricity behaves." As one tries to make a computer smaller and smaller, the need exists to be able to custom design those insulators.

Naren’s mentor at MITRE wanted him to study how to customize the material, to study how it's organized and arranged and study how that affects the final property. He tried to come up with a mathematical model on how to do that.

At Thomas Jefferson, Naren is a National Merit Semifinalist, Secretary General of the Model UN Team, member of the AAA Travel High School Challenge and Captain of the Quiz Bowl team, "It's Academic." He also ran cross country for three years and helped tutor minority students in the Diversity Committee Test Prep program. He's a member of the National Honor Society, French Honor Society and on the Jeopardy Team tournament. He also competed in the National Geographic Bee.

For college, Naren was accepted to MIT and Cal Tech. He wants to study electrical engineering or physics and start his own nanotech company, which builds things on an atomic or electrical level.

Alexander "Alex" Kim, 17, of Fairfax Ridge was selected for his project, "Morphological and Molecular Phylogeography of a Giant American River Prawn, Macrobrachium carcinus." He is the son of Duckju Kim, an artist, and John Kim, a computer networking engineer.

For his project, Alex looked at the variations of the body form and DNA of the largest freshwater shrimp in the Western hemisphere — the Giant American River Prawn. He said he was inspired by the book, "The Crayfish," by Thomas Huxley, which he read at age 13. He's also been involved in independent science research since his freshman year. He worked with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and had a student travel grant to visit Puerto Rico and San Marcos, Texas, to collect specimens and take measurements of the shrimp. And yes, he says he likes eating shrimp, too.

At Thomas Jefferson, he is co-captain of the Debate Team, on the Ocean Bowl — a quiz bowl for ocean science, and regional winner for two years. He's on the school's Environmental Impact Club, is a regional finalist in the Siemens Science Competition, a semifinalist in the Biology Olympiad, and a fourth-place winner in the 2008 National Vocabulary Championship.

For two years, he went to the Intel Science and Engineering Fair, and is the student representative to the Fairfax County Environmental Quality Advisory Council.

For college, Alex hopes to pursue his Ph.D. at Yale in ecological sciences and study how organisms are distributed on the planet.

"Congratulations to Alexander and Narendra on being selected as two of the 40 Finalists in this prestigious science contest and the only two from Virginia," said U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11th). "I wish both of them the best of luck as they compete for scholarships in the final stage of the competition. Both students are a credit to themselves, to their families, to the Fairfax County school system and to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which is one of the top high schools in the nation. Narendra and Alexander have already risen to the top in a tough field of more than 1,600 competitors. They should be very proud that their selection as finalists places them in the category of some of the best and the brightest students in the United States."

The finalists will receive an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., for a week-long event in March. While there, finalists will undergo a rigorous judging process, meet with national leaders, interact with leading scientists and display their research at the National Academy of Sciences. Top winners will be announced at a black-tie gala award ceremony at the Mellon Auditorium on March 10.