Monthly Archives: April 2023

LigerBots finish FRC season strong in West Springfield

Following strong performances at the Rhode Island and Revere District competitions, the Newton LigerBots robotics team qualified for the New England District Championships held in West Springfield this weekend. At the start of the competition, Jeffrey Lam, a Junior at Newton North HS, performed the National Anthem on his electric guitar! Competing alongside alliance partners Mayhem Robotics and Air Strike, the LigerBots placed 25th out of 90 teams in West Springfield, nearly qualifying for the World Championships.

Finishing off the season strong, the team won the FRC Imagery Award, which “celebrates attractiveness in engineering and outstanding visual aesthetic integration of machine and team appearance.”

Kevin Yang, LigerBots co-CTO and a Junior at Newton South HS, was named one of the four Dean’s List Finalists and thus won an invitation to attend the FRC World Championships in Houston, April 19-22. Until their next competition season, in January 2024, the LigerBots will conduct community outreach events and work on off-season projects!

MIT’s You Go Girl! Summer Program for 9th Grade Girls, July 18-21 or Aug. 1-4

Registration is open for You GO Girl!, the MIT Edgerton Center’s summer introduction to science and engineering for girls in the Greater Boston area who will be entering Grade 9.  Students may attend either July 18-21 or August 1-4, 8:30AM-2:30PM each day. A suggested donation of $100 for materials is requested. Apply by April 28. For more information, contact Amy Fitzgerald at 617-253-7931 or amyfitz@mit.edu.

IQ Learning: Summer STEM Camps in Brookline and Northborough

IQ Learning will offer two one-week summer camps this summer:

  • Northborough: STEAM: Building SculpturesAugust 7-11, at Trinity Church in Northborough, for students entering Grades 3-6. Students will weave math and science into art by grappling, creating, observing, and applying their understanding to designing artistic challenges through hands-on experiences. 
  • Brookline: STEM Mysteries: Breaking the CodeAugust 21-25, at United Parish in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner, for students entering Grades 4-7. Students will explore optical illusions, time travel, and breaking codes with the end goal of creating the camp’s own escape room.

IQ Learning and its summer STEM camp were started in Brookline last year by two certified, experienced, Harvard-trained teachers and math specialists, Cristina and Shephali, who met while working together in the Watertown Public Schools.

The aim of their STEM camps is to have kids engage in long-term STEM projects inspired by exciting themes and enable students to make connections to STEM concepts that they experience on interactive field-trips. For more information, email iqlearning314@gmail.com.

BU offers summer programs for young women in Grades 8-11

This year, Boston University Learning Resource Network (LERNet) will offer three in-person summer programs for young women living and attending school in Massachusetts.

AI4All is a three-week summer program focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s open to young women (and those who identify as such) currently in Grades 10-11 and living and attending school in Massachusetts. Participants explore topics such as robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing through team projects, industry field trips, and presentations from guest speakers. The program concludes with a small group research project and a presentation for friends and family. It runs July 24-August 11, Mondays-Fridays, 9:30AM-3:30PM. Apply by May 1.

The Artemis Project is a five-week summer program focused on computer science and led by BU undergraduates majoring in Computer Science or Engineering. It’s open to young women (and those who identify as such) currently in Grade 8 living and attending school in Massachusetts. Priority is given to students who live within 15 miles of Boston. Participants learn computer languages such as Scratch, AppInventor, HTML, CSS, and Python. They also are introduced to cryptography, artificial intelligence, robotics, and circuits. In addition, they learn how computer science is applied in the real world by hearing from guest speakers and visiting local industries. It runs July 10-August 11, Mondays-Fridays, 9:30AM-3:30PM. Apply by May 1.

GROW (Greater Boston Research Opportunities for Young Women) offers young women currently in Grade 11 the opportunity to perform research in a lab at Boston University for six weeks. Applicants must be 16 years old by July 1, live in Massachusetts, and attend school within 30 miles of Boston. Participants will have the opportunity to participate in cutting edge research in a collaborative setting. They will learn best research practices, hear from guest speakers, and develop communication skills by presenting their research at a culminating symposium. Participants who complete all program requirements will receive a stipend of $1500. Orientation is June 28-29, and the program runs July 5-August 11, Mondays-Fridays, 9:30AM-4:30PM. Apply by April 15.

Lemelson-MIT: Free webinars for inventors, Apr. 10-13

Lemelson-MIT will host free webinars for inventors at 7PM, April 10-13:

  • April 10: Sustainability, by Dassault Systemes and SolidWorks
  • April 11: 3D Modeling,  by Onshape
  • April 12: Entrepreneurship, by Slyngshot
  • April 13: Intellectual Property (IP), by a panel consisting of a representative of the U.S. Intellectual Property Alliance, an inventor and professor of engineering education and innovation management, and an InvenTeam teacher who was awarded two U.S. patents with her first two InvenTeams.

Black Hole Symphony at Museum of Science Planetarium, Apr. 24-27

The smash-hit Black Hole Symphony will be performed at the Museum of Science by a live chamber orchestra under the dome of the Charles Hayden Planetarium, in an entrancing and immersive production. Performances will be 7PM-8PM each night, April 24-27. The show is recommended for ages 18+ but may be suitable for ages 8+ if they are accustomed to musical concerts. Tickets are $20 and do not include museum admission.

Black Hole Symphony is a symphonic journey through spacetime, exploring the unfolding story of supermassive black holes as engines of gravity, light, and creation. This show is a unique collaboration between astrophysicists of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Black Hole Initiative with the musicians of the Multiverse Concert Series. Composer David Ibbett has sonified the light of black hole galaxies as musical notes and chords, in dramatic electro-symphonic score set to immersive 3-D visuals from the Charles Hayden Planetarium. Audiences will be plunged into deep space riding relativistic jets of plasma, guided through the dense dust torus, broad-line clouds, ultimately reaching the blazing accretion disk on the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.

The production is sponsored by MathWorks and the Massachusetts Music Teachers’ Association.

Science Club for Girls seeks Volunteer Manager & Video Program Intern

Science Club for Girls is seeking to hire:

  • Volunteer Manager: This position is full-time, and responsibilities include recruiting, screening, and supporting a diverse population of volunteers that reflects the communities SCFG serves, coordinating volunteer outreach efforts, and leading volunteer training sessions and communications.
  • Program Intern for SCFGLive! Science Show: This is position is paid, and work is done remotely. Responsibilities include script production, video editing, uploading, and maintaining viewership data.

Celebrate Earth Day at the Discovery Museum, Apr. 22

The Discovery Museums (177 Main Street, Acton) invites all to celebrate Earth Day on April 22, 10AM-1PM with friends from the American Chemical Society, local climate education and empowerment group Spring Forward, and the Acton Public Library. There will be a variety of family-friendly, hands-on activities related to local and global ecosystems including investigating algae,  learning about climate change, and building toward collective action.