Congratulations to Newton’s dual-high-school robotics team, the LigerBots!  The team competed well in its two regional qualifiers, securing a spot in the upcoming New England District Championships to be held in Springfield, April 13-16.

Last week, at the Greater Boston Qualifier held at Revere High School, the LigerBots  received the Engineering Inspiration Award, recognizing the team’s excellence in rookie training and community outreach events. Previously, the team had won FRC’s Gracious Professionalism Award. In both Regional Qualifiers, the team made it to playoffs but lost in the semi-finals — but nevertheless accumulated enough points overall to secure a spot at District Championships. More photos here.

The Ligerbots team does so much for STEM in Newton through its many community outreach programs — mentoring FIRST LEGO League teams, hosting FLL competitions, and participating enthusiastically in a wide variety of local STEM events. The Newton community now has a wonderful opportunity to return the favor:  This team needs to raise funds to support its multi-day trip to Springfield for the District Championships.  You can help the Ligerbots continue to succeed by donating here!  Thank you!

Today the Bowen Elementary School PTO held its 7th annual Science Day, an event that usually takes over the school gym but for the second year was held — very successfully — on Zoom. About 100 students presented the results of their science projects, undertook engineering challenges, and conducted experiments together online in six half-hour sessions. The students’ projects are available to the Bowen community on Flipgrid for the next week.

Bowen parent Diane Gomez was part of the founding committee that created Science Day seven years ago and has recruited and developed a terrific team to carry on as her daughter moves on to middle school next year. Along with Diane, Betty Wang, David Walend, Elizabeth Stover, Janna Greene, Lena Smolensky, Michelle Manne, and Young Lim organized the event — and thanks to Melanie Hildebrandt and Larissa Gordon for facilitating today. The team has curated a helpful list of online resources.  Also contributing to today’s success were:

• LigerBots team members, who served as moderators,
• Visiting scientists from the Journal of Emerging Investigators, who attended and reviewed the students’ presentations,
• Members of the Newton North HS STEMentors club, formed to inspire elementary students in STEM, who led sessions with science games, experiments, and hands-on engineering projects, and
• Principal Guzzi, who viewed each student’s FlipGrid presentation before the event and spoke in a brief keynote highlighting the students’ curiosity, engagement, and sharing

The organizers encourage other Newton PTOs to host Science Days, and their advice:  “Start small, keep the rules loose, and don’t formally judge it. Encourage kids to be excited and curious about science and feel empowered to share that curiosity with their community. We are so proud of every single one of these students. It takes so much courage to share your work!” For more information or advice, contact scienceday@bowenpto.org.

Newton’s city-wide high school robotics team, the LigerBots, debuted their 2022 robot, Prometheus, at the FIRST Robotics Competition New England District North Shore Event at Reading Memorial HS this weekend. The team was thrilled to place 3rd out of 40 teams in the Qualifying rounds and become captain of the Second Alliance team, which reached the semi-finals in the Playoffs. The LigerBots will compete again next weekend at the New England District Greater Boston Event, March 25-27. While in person attendance is restricted, observers can follow along here: NE District Greater Boston Event (2022) – The Blue Alliance.

Newton South HS sophomore Elena Baskakova has qualified for the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO) — a 9-hour essay/proof examination offered to the top 250 students in the AMC10 competitions run by the Mathematical Association of America. Elena placed in the Honor Roll of Distinction (top 1%) in AMC10 and scored well in the invitation-only second round, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME), earlier this year. She is a member of the NSHS Math Team and a participant in MIT PRIMES Circle studying Probability Theory. She competes with Western Mass ARML teams in high school tournaments.  Her ARML Stars team placed 11th in the Girls in Math at Yale competition and placed in the top 30 in HMMT February.

The Oak Hill Middle School MathCounts team won third place at the MathCounts MetroNorth Chapter competition, held online last month, qualifying the team for the in-person state-level competition this weekend. In the MetroNorth competition, twelve OHMS students participated, and four members of the team placed in the top quarter in the individual rounds. These four represented the school in the collaborative team round, solving 9 of the 10 problems and advancing to the state competition. MathCounts is a mathematics competition for middle-school students with chapter, state, and national events. The Oak Hill team is coached by Newton South HS students many of whom are MathCounts alumni. The coaches hope to start a MathCounts team at Brown MS next year.

Newton South High School students – Elena Baskakova, Steven Hu, Aaron Lu, Isaac Gordon, Alexander Loo, Shelley Wei, David Shaar, and Sophie Song – organized and ran the School Mathcounts Competition at Oak Hill Middle School. The event was held on January 11 and attracted over 30 students. The high school students proctored the competition, did live grading, and gave out awards. Congratulations to all students who participated in the event and, especially, to Noah Kim, Jared Mi, Vedant Kulkarni and Sophia Yan, who had the top four scores. This is first in a series of Mathcounts competitions that includes Chapter, State and National level competitions.

The Newton South HS Math Team excelled in its second meet in the Greater Boston Math League on November 12. Three team members — Vivek Vallurupalli, Ethan Pang, and Elena Baskakova — had perfect scores, and a few other students had almost perfect scores. Both the Sines and the Cosines earned perfect scores in the Team Round. The third GBML meet will be December 8-9.

Last week, the Newton South HS Math Team participated in its first meet, a pre-season scrimmage in the Greater Boston Mathematics League. The team’s future schedule includes the Duke Math Meet on November 6, the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament on November 13, American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) on November 10 and 16, and GBML meets on November 10 – 11, December  8 -9, January 12 – 13, and February 9 – 10.  In addition, a group of NSHS students is running a Math Club at Oak Hill MS with weekly practices to prepare for MathCounts and other math tournaments.