Jr. Tech will sponsor a Girls STEM Summit at Wentworth Institute of Technology (550 Huntington Ave, Boston) on April 5, 8AM-4PM. It’s aimed at young women in Grades 8-12 who love STEM and would like to learn about emerging STEM careers. Sponsors include Akamai Foundation, NationalGrid, SIM Boston, and Waters. The cost is $70 and includes lunch. Register online for individuals or groups of 7-20 students.
Code Ninjas (Wellesley) Events in March
Code Ninjas (161 Linden Street in Wellesley) will host the following events in March:
- Harry Potter Workshop: March 14, 9:30AM-12:30PM. Members free, non-members $15.
- Math and Physics in Games: March 18, 4PM-6PM. Free
You-Do-It Electronics Seeks Exhibitors for Arduino Day (Mar. 21) and Robo Day (Apr. 4)
You-Do-Electronics Center (YDI) — a local store that’s also a source of STEM awareness and inspiration for the community — will host two events: Arduino Day (March 21) and Robo Day (April 4, during National Robotics Week). Both events will be 11AM-4PM, filled with exhibits, activities, raffles, and special offers related to STEM. (See photos of last year’s Robo Day.) If you have an Arduino/Robotics project to showcase, or if you represent a STEM-related organization and would like to be an exhibitor at one or both events, email events@
New England Sci-Tech: Your Project in Space, Grades 7-12, on 9 Saturdays
The New England Sci-Tech STEM education center (16 Tech Circle, Natick) will host Your Project in Space: Citizen Science Projects for Teens to enable teams of two to four in Grades 7-12 to send their science projects in a high-altitude balloon to the edge of the atmosphere. It’s scheduled for nine Saturdays: Education and building on seven Saturdays, 3:30PM-5PM March 7 to April 25 (but not April 18), then all day for balloon launch on May 2, 9, or 16, then follow-up on May 30. The program is free for paid members of New England Sci-Tech, plus a $55 lab fee for materials.
Broad Institute: From Bases to Bytes: How Massive Sequencing and Machine Learning are Bringing New Insights to Disease, Mar. 4
Celebrating its first 15 years, the Broad Institute in Cambridge is hosting Broad@15, a series of free, public lectures. On March 4, 6-7:30PM, Broad Institute researchers will speak on From Bases to Bytes: How Massive Sequencing and Machine Learning are Bringing New Insights to Disease. Reception will follow. Register here. All Broad@15 talks will be live streamed. You can view the live stream and video of previous talks via links at broadinstitute.org/15.
Grades 7-8: Register Now for MIT SPARK, Mar. 14-15
MIT’s SPARK offers students in Grades 7 and 8 a variety of short, interesting classes on the MIT campus over one weekend, March 14-15. The registration lottery is open now through 5PM on March 3, and until that deadline all course preferences will be treated equally in the lottery. After that, any remaining seats will be open first-come/first-served. Students may choose from over 260 courses and must register on their own. For a full schedule, rank your top 3 classes and star at least 10 classes per time block. A $40 fee covers two days of classes and lunch and lots of walk-in activities. Generous financial aid is available. For more information not covered here, email spark@mit.edu. Here are 70 STEM courses offered:
- Acting Out Algorithms: Fancy Math but with Strings, Coloring, and Ice Cream
- ANT Farm: Acronym Not Tenable
- Artificially Not-Very-Intelligent
- Biology and Ecology in the Amazon
- Black Holes!
- BRIDGE DESIGN! Help Chickens Finally Cross the Road!
- Chemistry Magic Show!
- Clock arithmetic
- Colors in nature
- Cookie Chemistry
- Crash Course in Game Theory
- CRISPR: Hacking the Genome
- Designing Power Grids of the Future
- Dissections and Tessellations
- Diving Deeper: An Opulent Ocean Odyssey
- Everything you want to know about nuclear power
- Evolutionary Psychology: Why we act in the way we do
- Finite Automata
- Food Chemistry
- Fun Facts about the Elements of the Periodic Table
- Gravity
- Hello GitHub
- History of Modern Physics!
- how 2 rocket
- How to Be a Turing Machine
- How to deliver drugs
- How to Make the Perfect Button with CSS
- How to Spot Planes!
- How to turn $100k into $100 in a day
- How to Win Games
- Induction: “The last guy said it, so it must be true!”
- Intro to Computer Aided Design (CAD) with TinkerCAD
- Intro to Neuroscience: Understanding Human Vision
- Intro to Python Programming
- Intro to Soldering
- Introduction to CMOS
- Introduction to Python Programming
- Laser cutting 101
- Let’s Chance: Learn and Play with Probabilistic Coding in Scratch
- Light and Radiation: The Invisible World
- Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) Ice Cream
- List of Paradoxes
- Marine Toxins
- Materials Science and Engineering: What it’s all about!
- Microbiome 101: What’s in your poop?
- Minecraft SUPERComputer
- Non-Newtonian Fluids
- Perceptions and Illusions through the 5 Senses
- Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness
- Probability puzzles: Linearity of Expectation
- Problem Solving with Mechanical Engineering and Physics
- Product Design Workshop: Natural Disaster Relief
- Prototyping Circuits
- Psychiatric and Neurological Disorder
- Quick Mafs
- Ramsey Theory
- Robots: Past, Present, & Future
- Sail the High Seas
- Science Bowl
- Science Like a Girl
- Scratch!
- Sharing Secrets: An Introduction to Cryptography
- Sperner’s Lemma
- Stargazing, Telescopes and more!
- Tasteful Genetics
- That’s Rad: The (mostly) invisible world of radiation
- The Math Behind How Our Economy Works
- The Wonders of Math
- This is Your Brain on Drugs
- Vectors!
Register for Science on Saturday (Our Amazing Atmosphere and Its Gases) at MIT Lincoln Labs, Apr. 4
Registration is now open for the Saturday-morning session of Science on Saturday, on April 4 at 10AM at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory (244 Wood Street in Lexington). The topic will be Our Amazing Atmosphere and Its Gases, presented by Lincoln Laboratory’s Jude Kelley. Learn about the different gases that make up the atmosphere and the roles they play: Dense fog from solid carbon dioxide, freezing things with liquid nitrogen, and cryogenically cooled superconductors making magnets levitate in mid-air. All children (5-17 years) must be escorted by an adult, and every adult must be escorted by a child or children. Children under 5 are not admitted. Admission is free but each person attending must be registered. Space is limited. Register online by April 3 (March 21 for non-U.S. citizens). Register an adult first, then a child, then others. Adults must bring government photo identification. See other rules on the registration pages.
Expeditions to STEM, for Grades 6-8, Mar. 28
Expeditions to STEM is a one-day event organized by five high-school students (including two from Newton North HS) to help students in Grades 6-8 learn about different careers and opportunities in STEM fields. It features presentations and workshops led by STEM professionals, as well as a bazaar offering information about STEM-related extracurricular activities for high-school and college students. It will take place at the CIC Venture Cafe Cambridge (1 Broadway, Cambridge) on March 28, 9AM-3PM. You don’t have to be a “STEM person” to participate and learn from this event. Registration costs $12.24 and closes on March 15. For more information, or to request a fee waiver, email expeditionstostem@gmail.com.
Bridgewater State: Summer Science Academy, Grades 6-12
Bridgewater State University’s Center for the Advancement of STEM Education will host several one-week sessions of its Summer Science Academy for students entering Grades 6-12 to engage in science classes and hands-on investigation in the BSU Science and Math Center (24 Park Avenue, Bridgewater). Register here by March 20 for a $50 discount, otherwise by June 22. Other discounts for siblings or multiple weeks. Scholarships are available to selected students with demonstrated academic merit and financial need who apply by March 9.
Grades 6-12 ($400 per week)
- July 6-10: Create and Innovate: Make your Mark at the BSU Makerspace
- July 6-10: Forensics Institute of Bridgewater
- July 13-17: A Whale of a Mystery
Grades 9-12 ($500 per week)
- July 6-10: Pathways to Medicine
- July 13-17: Cancer in Context
National Conference on Science Education, Apr. 2-5
The National Conference on Science Education will be held April 2-5, at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Early-bird pricing just ended, but advance discounts are available until March 13. Discounted pricing is available for full-time students. Register here.