La Jolla Student Wins National Science Award

Alan John Hu of La Jolla won the nation’s premier high school science competition Monday night, earning a $12,000 scholarship in the 44th annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search.

“I guess totally awesome is the expression,” the 17-year-old La Jolla High School student said in a telephone interview after the awards ceremony in Washington.

“The people here were just incredibly good,” he said of the other 40 finalists. “I don’t really feel I’m somehow better than anyone else. They are all a part of it, and they are all good.”

More than 1,200 students from high schools nationwide entered the contest last year. The 40 finalists represented 13 states and Puerto Rico. Since the program began in 1942, five recipients have won Nobel Prizes in science.

Hu won the award for a project that combined mathematics and computer science to reduce the time spent finding specific records in a file of information.

“Alan is very well-rounded, mature and I’d use the word brilliant,” said Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley and a member of the eight-member judging team. “There was almost an immediate consensus that he would be the first-place winner.”

Hu began studying computers in the fourth grade, playing computer games in a course at La Jolla Elementary School. In 1979, he took a language assembly course at UC San Diego. That course “pulled me in the academic mainstream,” he said.

The more Hu studied computers, the more he enjoying learning about how they work. He said the exposure conquered his fear of computers and gave him the drive to learn about other things.

When Hu was in the sixth grade, his father told him that “school is no problem. Just go outside and have a good time.”

Hu said this advice inspired him to learn about a variety of subjects instead of concentrating on one thing. “My parents don’t push me for anything because I want to do things,” he said.

First in his class at La Jolla High School, Hu has won awards in subjects ranging from French to math. Last year he won first place at the greater San Diego County Science and Engineering Fair. He is president of the school bicycling and chess clubs and enjoys playing volleyball and tennis. Hu has been playing the piano for 10 years, and he composes music.

He also studies automobile repair. When he learned in January that he was a finalist for the award, he was trying to jump-start his car. The automobile maintenance class is “something to learn and this is the last chance in my life I’ll get a chance to learn it,” he said.

“Whenever someone makes an effort to learn something, it gives you a broader perspective. The more you learn, it’s always going to come back and help you out.”

When he first began studying computers, Hu said, it was “scary, but once you put aside fear, things are seldom as hard as you’re afraid they will be.”

Hu plans to continue his study of math and computers in college after graduating from high school this year. He has applied to UC Berkeley, California Institute of Technology and Stanford.

Hu has been accepted in the engineering department at Berkeley, but has not yet decided which school he will attend.