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Pinnacle 2002 – Scholars’ Biographies Timothy Andres (Music) Timothy has attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute as a composer for the past two summers, where this past summer his Two Movements for Membranophone and Idiophone Quintet was premiered. This year, he is undertaking a project on the music of Charles Ives, culminating in a lecture and performance of Ives' Concord sonata at Juilliard. Julia Carney (Journalism) Julia Carney lives in Newton, Massachusetts and will be a senior at Newton North High School. Currently, she is editor in chief of the Newtonite, a bi-weekly, award-winning newspaper. With her co-editor, she supervises a 75 member staff, writes, edits, and oversees the $30,000 budget. This role requires a 25-hour per week commitment. She particularly enjoys writing about national topics, such as the U.S. military presence in the Middle East. From January 2001to December 2002, Carney was arts editor as well as features editor. During this time, the Newtonite won a silver crown from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). In addition, her feature article "Working Hard To Navigate, Communicate" about three handicapped students received 2nd best feature from the CSPA. This year Carney attended the CSPA's convention in New York City. There she enjoyed co-covering an eight-member panel, which included prominent reporters, lawyers and an executive producer at CBS news. Her article, "The Press, Law Enforcement and the Public's Right to Know," about the relationship between the media andlaw enforcement, was later published in the Student Press Review Magazine. Recently, Carney won the Humanitatis Award for her leadership and contributions to the Newton North junior class. Carney is active in a myriad of clubs and organizations throughout her community and school. For the past six years she has volunteered at a battered women's homeless shelter in Boston. She is president of the informal debate club. She has participated in several clubs including Model United Nations, the Environmental Club and Fighting AIDS Through Education. She is particularly interested in her work for Amnesty International; at the beginning of her sophomore year, she led a vigorous letter writing campaign to legislators detailing the poor treatment of women in the Taliban (pre September 11th). This summer, Carney works at the Massachusetts General Hospital and volunteers 20 hours a week at the battered women's shelter. She likes photography, hiking, white water rafting, the beach and attending concerts. Carney also loves to travel-having spent one month last summer in Belize and Guatemala building a resource center for a village of Mayan farmers. Edward Coakley (Psychology) Edward Coakley is a rising senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County, Virginia. At TJ, he completed his AP Psychology course as a sophomore and served as the President of the Psychology Club his junior year. His essay "Cure Could Mean the Big Sleep for Narcolepsy" won a prestigious award from the Sleep Research Society. The Sleep Research Society will publish Edward's essay in their society bulletin. His other behavior research has included a project about "The Difference between Males and Females in Perceived Sexual Interest." Besides psychology, Edward's other interests include math, physics, advanced optics, music, French and above all philosophy. He is a violinist with the select American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and member of the National Honor Society and the National French Honor Society. During July, Edward was attending Virginia’s Governor's School for Math and Science. After Pinnacle, Edward will be attending the Fairfax County Youth Leadership Program. Edward loves sharing his passion for knowledge and truth with others. Matt Humphrey (Computer Science) Matt Humphrey is 15 years old and will be a sophomore at Mt. Lebanon High School in the fall of 2002. He lives with his parents, Jim and Holly, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Matt excels in many different areas of education, but his greatest strengths lie mainly in the fields of computer science and mathematics. At the age of 10, while in the 5th grade, Matt finished first in an international computer programming contest. At the age of 12, while in the seventh grade, Matt was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University’s Andrew’s Leap, a high-level computer science and robotics summer program primarily for high school juniors and seniors. Shortly after completing Andrew's Leap at the age of 13, Matt was invited to attend Carnegie Mellon University as a full-time student, to skip the eighth grade and high school. Matt chose to complete middle school and to continue on to high school while simultaneously working towards a degree in computer science from CMU. During elementary, middle, and high school, Matt has won numerous awards in areas of education other than computer science, including MathCounts, CalcuSolve, Math 24 Challenge, National Academic Games, the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair, the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science, the National Junior High School Math Exam, and the National German Examination. Outside of school, Matt enjoys all kinds of sports, his favorite being soccer, which he plays throughout the year. He plays soccer not only on his high school team, but also for the Pittsburgh North Stars, a premier club team, as well as the PA-West State ODP team (Olympic Development Program). Sophie Kerman (Creative Writing) Sophie Kerman lives in Dobbs Ferry, a suburb of New York City, with her parents and three cats. She is sixteen years old and will be a junior at Horace Mann Upper School in the Bronx this fall. Her first major work, which she dictated to her father, her older sister, and her babysitter at age three, was a manila folder full of poetry on the topics of love and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When she was seven, she won a Cricket magazine poetry contest, and during her stay in elementary school, she had a plethora of short stories laminated by her teachers. Though she had strong beginnings as a writer, Sophie has often found English class rather disappointing, instead preferring the challenges of Advanced Placement Music Theory, math competitions, and an upcoming course in video production. She also plays the violin in her school orchestra, takes piano lessons, and participates in the school's theater program both on stage and behind the scenes. In addition, she is an avid backpacker; this July, she will complete a thirty-day course in Alaska with the National Outdoor Leadership School. Emily Russell (Physics) When Emily was two years old, she independently discovered Newton’s law of inertia. She was riding in her car-seat, with a bagel on a tray in front of her; the car swerved, and the bagel flew off to the side. Chortling with glee, she announced to her parents, “The bagel wanted to keep on going! ” As a toddler, she didn’t see anything remarkable about that, and promptly forgot her discovery. But her mind’s penchant for physics didn’t lie dormant for long. She really fell in love with astronomy and cosmology at about ten, when she did a research report on black holes; this led to an intense interest in physics, particularly the more exotic fields. She primarily taught herself from astronomy magazines and books on astrophysics and particle theory. This June, she participated in the US Physics Olympiad Team Training Camp, affectionately known by survivors as “physics boot camp.” She has a reputation at her school, Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT, for wearing blindingly bright colors and constantly singing. She is a soprano in the Choate chamber choir, and last year co-founded Adiloi, an a cappella choir committed to singing the music of the Republic of Georgia. She has also acted in several school plays, competes on the math team, and has participated in the USA Math Olympiad. Matthew Salerno (Art) Born on June 6, 1985, in Queens, N.Y., Matt's propensity for artistic endeavors became apparent very early on. In these first years, Matt began to develop his abilities by devouring coloring books and imitating his favorite comic strips. This practice led to one of his first artistic accolades, winning a city wide poster contest in the first grade. By the time he moved to Orange County, N.Y. in 1993, his artwork consisted of cartoons and comic strips as well as realistic depictions of sports and music figures. It was shortly after moving to Orange County that Matt began playing the guitar and discovered music, an interest that would at first rival but later compliment his passion for visual arts. The two areas of interest were first brought together soon after he learned to play the guitar. A boring day at home was transformed into an exercise in creativity, as he spent hours designing hundreds of guitars, each with a unique shape and theme. In 1996, his interests in both visual arts and music were united once again in the form of a music video he chose to create for a school project. During the making of this video, Matt learned that music and visual arts weren’t two opposing entities but actually natural companions, each able to be used to enhance the presence of the other. In addition to this discovery, Matt became familiar with the artistic process, ( rough drafts, storyboards, etc.) and created a storyboard for his music video that is used to this day by the audio visual supervisor as an example for high school students. In high school, Matt has taken a more focused approach to his development in art as well as continuing to explore other interests. This struggle to find ways to bring together and harmonize different interests and aspects of life has come to characterize Matt’s experiences. Matt's interest in the connections between art and the time periods in which they were created was heightened with the completion of his tenth grade research project on the subject. The knowledge he gained expanded his understanding of art and in turn, expanded his own capabilities. At this point, whether playing guitar with his band, collaborating with other members of student government, hiking, driving in his car, or drawing in his sketchbook, Matt hopes to apply the open-minded attitude required for artistic endeavors to all aspects of life, in hopes of gaining knowledge and experience that will be valuable for the future. |
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