STEMNOW Brings Teachers and Students from Diverse Backgrounds to Campus for Cutting-Edge Research and Exploration of Smart Cities, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Robotics, and More, Groundbreaking 65 Percent of STEMNOW Students Are Young Women
BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 10, 2018 — (PRNewswire) — In July and August, hundreds of teachers and students will gather in Downtown Brooklyn for the sixth annual STEMNOW, one of New York City's largest and most comprehensive lineups of summer workshops, classes, and labs — most of them free. STEMNOW immerses middle and high school students and their teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math — the STEM subjects.STEMNOW kicks off with a luncheon at NYU Tandon on July 12, 2018, 12:30 p.m. featuring
John B. King, Jr., president and CEO of
The Education Trust and a former U.S. Secretary of Education. For more information and to register, please visit:
https://engineering.nyu.edu/summer-stem-rsvp
Throughout the summer, students will get hands-on experience in fields such as robotics and mechatronics, chemical engineering, smart cities, 3D printing, and cybersecurity. Many will learn the tools top entrepreneurs use to design products, build prototypes, and launch their own companies.
STEMNOW includes workshops — seven of which are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) — that teach New York's teachers. At the conclusion of this summer's program, NYU Tandon will have completed 80 percent of its 2013 pledge to the White House to educate 500 teachers and positively impact 50,000 public school students throughout New York City by 2023. A record 62 teachers and nearly 850 students will participate this year alone.
New programs will introduce teachers and students to white-hot fields like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI). eCybersecurity may see as many as 3.5 million job openings by 2021, and demand for workers in AI is on track to create some 2.3 million new jobs for engineers and data scientists.
One of the new STEMNOW programs, a cybersecurity immersion, gives New York teachers the tools to return to their schools and launch cybersecurity classes and clubs for their female students, preparing them to enter a field desperately in need of women. It will run alongside NYU Tandon's long-running series that introduces high school girls to computer science and cybersecurity, as well as a program on campus by Girls Who Code. The new AI summer program introduces high schoolers to neural networks — a key architecture for AI systems — by teaching them to program radio-controlled cars to function autonomously.
Students and teachers will also have the opportunity to participate in such cutting-edge research as COSMOS, an NSF - funded collaboration to develop, deploy, and operate an advanced wireless research testbed in West Harlem; and SONYC (Sounds of New York City), a first-of-its-kind comprehensive research initiative to understand and address noise pollution, the number one complaint of New Yorkers.
In all, nearly 20 programs will be offered this summer, reflecting NYU Tandon's longstanding commitment to opening engineering – with its high salaries and many career opportunities – to students from a wide range of backgrounds and economic means.
"STEMNOW exemplifies the spirit of collaboration at NYU Tandon. It is much more than just a summer program; the entire school mobilizes — faculty, students, alumni, and administrators — to help hundreds of students access high-quality STEM education," said NYU Tandon dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan. "Our goal is to give as many young men and women from diverse backgrounds a chance to discover engineering and science through immersive, hands-on experiences, including participating in high-level lab research. We are proud to empower teachers with innovative ideas and curriculum so they in turn can inspire students to be our future engineers and scientists."
Forty faculty members and 130 undergraduate and graduate students and post-doctoral researchers from across New York University will teach or mentor students in labs as part of STEMNOW.
For middle and high school students, highlights of STEMNOW include:
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ARISE (Applied Research Innovations in Science and Engineering): A seven-week program designed for 10th and 11th grade students with little or no access to high-quality STEM education experiences, students of color, and those from low-income backgrounds. Students are mentored by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty members, and are immersed in challenging college-level coursework and lab research in such fields as civil and urban engineering, composite materials, robotics, sensors, and protein engineering. Many return to work in NYU Tandon labs during the school year.
- Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicles (AI 4 AV): In this three-week program from computer science and engineering professor and noted AI expert
Anna Choromanska's Machine Learning Lab, students discover one of the most popular deep-learning frameworks and implement their own AI systems to make a radio-controlled car drive autonomously. Students learn about Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and methods of collecting and preprocessing data obtained from vehicles. In the end, every team will be able to apply CNNs to program the autonomous car.
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CrEST (Creativity in Engineering, Science, and Technology): In this "camp within a camp," high school students who were trained during the CrEST spring term work with NYU Tandon graduate and undergraduate students to run a series of one-week workshops for hundreds of middle school students. These summer camps are run by some of the city's most prominent nonprofit organizations, including
Harlem Children's Zone,
Flatbush Development Corporation,
Grand Street Settlement and NYU's own
College and Career Lab program. Participants learn about electronics, circuitry, mechanical systems, physical computing, robotics, and other STEM disciplines. For the first time CrEST has also set up specialized STEM labs off-campus at summer camp sites run by
CAMBA and
Horizions National.
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CS4CS (Computer Science for Cyber Security): This initiative introduces young women in high school to programming, virtuous hacking, and digital forensics during an intensive and supportive three-week program designed to encourage them to pursue educational opportunities in cybersecurity. Students become cyber-detectives seeking clues to the mysterious disappearance of Ariana Grande-inspired alter ego
Ariana Venti, who vanishes during her big concert.
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Girls Who Code: NYU Tandon is partnering with the national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology and coding and teaching girls how to be change agents in their communities. The program immerses high school girls in computer science for projects in art and storytelling, robotics, video games, websites, apps, guest lectures, and field trips.
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Science of Smart Cities: In this highly successful program developed by NYU Tandon and shared internationally, middle school students learn about energy, urban infrastructure, transportation, and wireless communications — aspects of science and engineering that make cities more livable, efficient, sustainable, and safer. At the conclusion of the program, participants stage a Smart Cities Exposition, demonstrating their ideas, devices, smart buildings, and infrastructure. More than 600 students have completed the program since its inception.
- ieSoSC (
Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Science of Smart Cities ): Taught by NYU Tandon graduate and undergraduate students, this intensive new program introduces upper middle school and high school students who previously completed Science of Smart Cities to innovation and entrepreneurship . After five weeks of hands-on instruction and mentoring, participants enter a three-week team-based workshop to create smart-cities devices or ideas that offer solutions to urban challenges.
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SPARC (Summer Program for Automation Robotics and Coding): This new, two-week, full-day summer program introduces domestic and international high school students to the basics of robotics, mechatronics, and programming.
- Tech Kids Unlimited : Technology can be a great equalizer for those with learning or emotional difficulties. Workshops by Tech Kids Unlimited aim to provide special-needs students with the 21st-century technology tools they require for success.
