Faces of Berkeley: Freshman Sees Future in Stars

According to Harish Khandrika, we are all made of stars-and that is why he's so interested in learning about them.

"Everything comes from the stars," he says. "Studying them will help us understand our own origins."

As a sophomore in high school in La Jolla, Calif., Khandrika was so determined to start doing research in high-energy astronomy that he decided to ask for the help of astrophysicists at UC San Diego.

He got lucky with one of the researchers there, with whom he eventually collaborated on a research project that proved the existence of a massive black hole in the center of a neighboring galaxy. His work won him a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute, an organization dedicated to supporting young talent.

Khandrika, who was born in India, started his undergraduate education at UC Berkeley in the fall. He shows all the signs of a first-semester student, even down to his excitement in discovering the best places to eat in Berkeley. But he comes with experiences that set him apart from the rest of his classmates.

On a plane ride back from India in junior high, Khandrika picked up Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

"I really started to get into all those little complexities," he says about Hawking's book, which catalyzed his enthusiasm for astronomy.

Khandrika read more about the subject and once in high school, he made his way into an American Astronomical Society meeting.

He says that seeing all the scientists' projects inspired him to do his own work to contribute to the field. Like most other 15-year-olds, however, he didn't have direct access to any high-energy physics labs.

When he went to UC San Diego and knocked on the doors of astrophysicists, he asked to be taken seriously as a researcher and was determined not to let his age keep him from his passion.

"Amazingly enough, that got me in touch with a high-energy astrophysicist who was working with undergrads," he says. "And he just treated me like I was one of his students."

That astrophysicist was Richard Rothschild, who says he allowed Khandrika to work with him because he proved himself to be "smart and a self-starter."

"It wasn't the kind of thing where I had to baby-sit him or hold his hand," Rothschild says. "And he wasn't scared by having to learn the programs. He just jumped right in."

After taking classes in calculus and quantum physics, Khandrika did research that analyzed radiation emitted by stars. He did two award-winning science projects and co-wrote a paper with Rothschild.

The paper proved the existence of a massive black hole in the center of neighboring radioactive galaxy Centaurus A.

Khandrika, who plans to major in astrophysics, hopes to continue his research at UC Berkeley. He says he is very interested in answering the fundamental questions of our existence.

"I think kids ask the right questions," he says. "Why are we here? Who are we? What's that thing in the sky?"

Tags: