Carmel Valley Middle School - Central Coast Regional Middle School Science Bowl
Coach Guoping Xu has worked for Qualcomm as a principal engineer in the field of electronics cooling since 2013. Prior to joining Qualcomm, he led high-end server systems thermal design in Sun Microsystems and Oracle for twelve years. He holds his Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has published more than 30 technical papers. He enjoys teaching science in his spare time. He has volunteered as a Science Olympiad event coach and head coach in elementary and middle schools for the past six years.
Co-coach Nelson has been teaching English at Carmel Valley since 2005 and has advised the Science Bowl and Quiz Bowl clubs since 2018. She enjoys displaying the trophies in her classroom and is eternally impressed with the students' knowledge base.
Austin Xu is an eighth-grade student who enjoys learning and challenging himself in math and science. He has been participating in the Science Olympiad for four years now, having lots of fun and learning many new things. This is also his second year participating in Science Bowl. Outside of school, he enjoys playing soccer with his friends. He also has been playing piano for several years.Sean Yu is an eighth-grade student. He is open to all types of science except for math. He is generally displeasuring to be around, and often has a sense of humor that no one around him understands or uses frequently. Overall, he leans towards molecular biology because of previous exposure to the topic, and is considering it as a future interest.
Flora Jiang is an eighth-grade student who feels like a sevie every once in a while. This is her second year doing Science Bowl. She thinks ESS is cool, especially the parts with earth and space. She pretty much dropped sports since Covid to invest in the art of staying at home. Her hobbies include, but are not limited to, sleeping, eating, sitting, watering plants, sleeping, eating, drinking water, etc. Fortunately she often ends up spending a great deal of time doing those, intentional or not. Flora is looking forward to becoming a parrotfish in the near future. She procrastinated writing this bio, and she will regret writing the bio at all, too. Anyway, special thanks to Tarbuck and Marshak for writing epic textbooks.
Larry Wu is an eighth-grade student interested in math, science, and chemistry. He would like to learn more computer science, and in his free time, he likes to spend time with friends and learn new things. He also likes to read and play games when he is bored.
Darmen Yessengeldy is a seventh-grade student who is passionate about physics and math. He is also an athletic swimmer who competes in swim meets on a regular basis. Darmen loves extracurricular activities that involve science, and he likes to challenge himself with new topics and compete in different STEM events. Basketball used to be one of his favorite sports and he can’t wait to start playing again outside with his friends. One day, Darmen wants to compete in the Olympic games as a swimmer, graduate college, and become a scientist. Now, one of the first steps in becoming a scientist is right in front of him, where he will compete at the National Science Bowl.
