Whiz Kid: Kelly Hamachi

Whiz Kid’s Name: Kelly Hamachi

Whiz Kid’s School:  (Class of 2011)

Whiz Kid’s City of Residence: Mountain View

Whiz Kid’s Accomplishments: Kelly maintains a 4.56 GPA in school. She also serves as a committee chairperson of her school’s Japanese exchange program; is a member of her school’s Key Club, which is a community service school club; and plays on Mountain View High’s No. 1 varsity girls’ doubles team for badminton. Academically, she holds a National Forensic League Degree of Excellence, is an AP Scholar with Distinction, is a National Merit Commended Finalist, and so far has completed two years of cardiac laboratory research in the Yang Laboratory at Stanford University.

Kelly one of only two annual winners of the “Innovator of the Future” scholarship from Sunnyvale-based Rambus, Inc. She will start at UC Berkeley this fall.

Whiz Kid’s Key to Success: Kelly says, “I think [it] is my curiosity, which causes me to pursue things that I am genuinely interested in. My curiosity was my main motivation in joining the Yang Lab and dedicating much of my free time to it. Lab research is so different from high school biology labs, because I get to create and execute my own experiments. It is so exciting and incredibly rewarding to go into the lab each day and see results from my studies, and this is what motivates me to continue.”