TechGirlz, a nonprofit program of CompTIA, is hosting over 30 free, online workshops running in two-hour sessions throughout March and April for girls in Grades 5-8.

Harvard Museums of Science and Culture will host these free, online events:

• Lessons from Plants: Online book discussion for older children and teens, February 23, 6PM-7PM. Register here.
• After-School Animal Encounters: Get Growing!: For younger children, March 9, 4PM-4:45PM. Register here.

The Christa McAuliffe Center at Framingham State University will host the film Undiscovered Worlds, February 25, followed by a presentation and Q&A about NASA’s search for exoplanets. The presentation and Q&A will be with Katharine Hesse and Evan Tey from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Science Office at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.  You may to attend either:

• In-person:  7PM for the film (recommended for ages 12+) followed by the presentation and Q&A at 7:30PM, $5 per person. Register here.
• On-line:  7:30PM presentation and Q&A, free.  Register here.

The Broad Institute will honor an international event, Rare Disease Day, on February 28 with its own free, virtual seminar, Spotlight on Cancer,  2PM-5PM, streamed live from Broad’s auditorium. Register here.

This year MIT’s Spark enrichment program for Grades 7-8 will be run virtually March 12 (9AM-6PM EST!) and March 13 (10AM-6PM EDT!). MIT students run Spark and teach its courses. The cost is $40 per student regardless of the number of courses taken, and there is generous, need-based financial aid available. Register by March 1 with your course choices to be included in the lottery for course placements. To maximize the number of time blocks in which you have classes, for each time block you should rank at least 3 classes and star at least 6 classes. After the lottery, there will be first-come/first-served registration for remaining spots. For more information, email spark@mit.edu. Among the 71 classes available are these STEM-related ones:

• Intro to Javascript (Beginners)
• Inside Java
• Let’s make a discord bot!
• How to make an impact in your community using programming and design
• PicoPlay Workshop: Program a Mobile Device!
• Making Your Own Water Filters
• Geometry and Beauty of Soap Bubbles
• Learn Rocket Science With MIT Rocket Team!
• How to be an Astronaut
• How to Build a Solar Car
• How to build a spacecraft
• Help Solve Climate Change!
• Algorithmic Justice through Media Literacy Education
• Digital humanities: what’s that all about?
• pRoPoSiTiOnAL LoGiC
• Information and the Redundancy of English
• A History of Number Systems
• Turning up the Heat: A Crash Course in Heat Transfer
• CRISPR: The Molecular Scissors
• Microbiome 101: What’s in your poop?
• Fun with Polymers!
• Wet lab: extracting strawberry DNA
• Coastal Ecology
• Ice Cream and Other Cold Things: Fun with Liquid Nitrogen
• How do we fight against COVID?
• FRUIT SNACKS!!!! with a side of some Biology
• Optics for Aerospace
• How to find Exoplanets
• The Ballad of You and Your Brain
• What is Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).
• Ionizing Radiation: From Hot Rocks to Fusion Plasmas
• Nucleic Acids: The Symphony of Life
• Fun with Immunology
• Is life about to get CRISPER?: learn the basics of genome editing!
• A not-so-brief History of Particle Accelerators
• sticky situations
• Humans working on the Moon: training and guidelines
• Human Identification through DNA Typing

Harvard IACS, MIT IDSS, and Microsoft Research New England will co-sponsor a one-day, virtual event — the 6th annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) technical conference — on March 11, 10AM-2PM. Register here.

The Newton Free Library will present an online discussion for ages 5-8, Habitat: Rainforests!, on Tuesday, February 15 at 4PM. Learn why the world’s rainforests are they called rainforests, what animals live there, how rainforests differ across continents, how habitats vary within different layers of the rainforests, and the foods that are found there.