STEM Today Fall/Winter 2019

FALL / WINTER 2019

of stem

women PLUS: The World’s Biggest Science Festival: Interview with Marc Schulman, Executive Director, USA Science & Engineering Festival

Brain Games: Being Smart Gets Very Entertaining

A SYMPHONY OF PERSONAL MEDIA LIKE THIS ...

A premium DVR with built-in DVD/Blu-Ray player Records all your streaming content Has an elegant, feature-rich movie server Skips commercials Digital music stereo system Stores all your family photos and videos Has up to 20TB of internal storage Is 4K ready

NEEDS THE RIGHT BATON. The first all-in-one premium DVR for the streaming age, Modulus has a beautiful harmony of features, all controlled by our extraordinary, patented Ultimate Remote. It has responsive Voice Control, an Air Mouse, and a full QWERTY keyboard on the back for easy input of your information. It’s backlit, ergonomic, doesn’t need line of sight, and even allows you to replace three other remotes by programming them into ours.

Let your media play on!

You are now free to enjoy your media.

GETMODULUS.COM

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Charles Warner cwarner@goipw.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Shane Brisson shane@goipw.com

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Robert Yehling

MANAGING EDITOR

Alex Moersen

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Anthony Elio Patricia Miller

Erin James

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

SENIOR WRITERS

Beth Covington Mike Washburn

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Alexa Black Erin James Daryl Tabor

EDUCATIONAL ADVISOR

Mike Washburn

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

Dave Van Niel

PROJECT DIRECTOR

Steven Higgins

SENIOR VIDEO EDITOR

Adam Saldaña

VIDEO EDITOR

SENIOR DIRECTOR, DEVELOPMENT

Evan Kelley David Marble

SPECIAL THANKS

Marie Arturi and Eda Gimenez/Buncee; Carly O’Brien/USA Science and Engineering Festival; University of Chicago Lab School

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, Expedition 61 crewmember Jessica Meir of NASA climbs aboard a Soyuz trainer during final crew qualification exams on Aug. 30, 2019. Meir will launch with Expedition 61 crewmember Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos and spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the United Arab Emirates on Sept. 25 on the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a mission on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA/Beth Weissinger This publication is dedicated to the dreamers, the innovators, the collaborators, and the doers – who can’t be bothered by those saying it can’t be done. Nicholas and Aria,the future is yours!

Published by INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES WORLDWIDE, INC 620 S. Dahlia Circle, M103 Glendale CO 80246 | (720) 476-4920 www.innotechtoday.com | info@innotechtoday.com

PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

EXECTUIVE DIRECTOR Marc Schulman DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & MEDIA Carly O’Brien SENIOR DIRECTOR Lauren Raymond

#innotechtoday innotechtoday

innotechtoday

innotechtoday

innotechtodaymagazine

For advertising inquiries, please contact: 720-476-4920 FOR PRINT OR DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS, VISIT INNOTECHTODAY.COM, OR FIND US ON POPULAR DIGITAL NEWSSTANDS AND READERS.

All trademarks, service marks, photos, and logos contained within this publication are the property of their respective owners, and may not be individually identified in this publication.

2

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

This is Flagstaff

PLA NET RIDE R FL AG STAF F LU NA R LEGACY Photo credit: USG S

photo P45, F96 547c

AXOL OT L BI OL OG IX POBA M E D IC A L

chooseflagstaff.com

contents COVER STORY

16 S PECIAL

SECTION: The Women of STEM

ABOUT THE COVER: Collaboration. Mentoring.

Networking. Community.

Achievement. Brilliance.

Five women who embody all that STEM represents (clockwise, from top left): Lori H. Schwartz, The Tech Cat; Cara Santa Maria, National Geographic; Eda Gimenez, Buncee; Dr. Noel Sauer, Cibus.

(Center) Ananya Asthana, Women in STEM.

6 From the Editor 8T he World’s Biggest Science Festival: Interview with Marc Schulman, USASEF

12 B rain Games: Being Smart Gets Very Entertaining

16 S PECIAL SECTION:

The Women of STEM

20 A nanya Asthana, Executive Director, Women in STEM

22 C ara Santa Maria,

Correspondent, National Geographic Channel

24 Noel Sauer, VP Research, Cibus 28 L ori H. Schwartz CNN Tech

Correspondent, The Tech Cat

30 E da Gimenez,

Strategy Manager, Buncee

32 In Our Next Issue

4

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

®

Book your Space Camp group experience today!

Programs are available for adults, families and children ages 9-18.

Enjoy out-of-this-world astronaut training simulations in the internationally-renowned Space Camp program.

Spend a day or spend the week!

There’s something here for every group!

Call 1-800-637-7223 to plan your summer trip now. Prime spots are filling fast!

SpaceCampUSA Huntsville, AL • spacecamp.com

FROM THE EDITOR We’ve heard the call from the business, technology, and social innovation worlds for years: “We need more women in STEM career fields.”

Executive Editor Robert Yehling

“ We celebrate women of STEM as our partners at the USA Science and Engineering Festival expand their presentation of girls in STEM.”

What will it take to increase the percentage from today, when women only make up about 25% of the STEM career workforce? Where do we begin? How early in girls’ school years should we start reaching out? Who will enter their lives and guide them onto the road that lands them in the millions of fulfilling, innovative STEM-based jobs that lie ahead in the 2020s?

Welcome to a very special issue of STEM Today. In this issue, we celebrate women in STEM — and the girls boldly moving forward with them in not only science, technology, engineering and math, but also social innovation, mentorship and entrepreneurship. We hear from four esteemed professionals in STEM-based careers, all of whom either teach or mentor tomorrow’s leaders: National Geographic Channel correspondent, author, social justice advocate and Talk Nerdy podcast host Cara Santa Maria; global sustainable farm crop innovator and biochemist Noel Sauer, Vice President of Research at Cibus; Eda Gimenez, the Strategy Manager of Buncee, an amazing interactive educational platform now used by educators and students in more than 100 countries; and tech visionary Lori H. Schwartz, CNN Tech Correspondent and author of the forthcoming book, The Tech Cat. Perhaps the crème de la crème of our special focus is our interview with a young lady these influencers envision when they think of “tomorrow’s STEM professional,” Chicago high school senior Ananya Asthana, the founder and executive director of Women in STEM. Ananya has the potential to become to STEM and social innovation what Greta Thunberg is to climate change awareness and activism; a bold teenager touching the world and changing lives while charting a progressive course for women in the 2020s.

We celebrate women of STEM as our partners at the USA Science and Engineering Festival expand their presentation of girls in STEM. That will be in full view at the 2020 USASEF convention, where approximately 350,000 students, educators, influencers, leaders and innovators will gather in Washington D.C. in late April. We covered the topic in our wide-ranging interview with Executive Director Marc Schulman.

Then there is a favorite for any STEM-based adult or student: playing brain games. Or, rather, watching the new NatGeo series by the same name. With the eight-episode BrainGames reboot premiering on NatGeo in January, hosted by Keegan-Michael Key and featuring a parade of celebrities, we talked with field correspondent Cara Santa Maria, previously featured in 2015 on the cover of our flagship publication, Innovation & Tech Today.

We invite you to bundle up in the cold weather and enjoy the perspectives of these successful visionaries, one and all. We also welcome your comments on our social networks, or directly to us.

Happy Holidays from the crew at STEM Today.

Robert Yehling

6

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

APRIL 24-26, 2020

/

WASHINGTON, DC

Join the nation's largest K-12 STEM and workforce development event.

Become a Sponsor today! Space is limited!

Learn more at USASCIENCEFESTIVAL.ORG

#SciFest

See Today's Students as Tomorrow's...

Explorers

Discoverers

Innovators

Biggest

THE WORLD’S SCIENCE FESTIVAL

By Robert Yehling

Marc Schulman, Executive Director, USA Science & Engineering Festival Every two years, teens, adults and influencers descend upon Washington, D.C. for an explosion of fun and interactive learning. This isn’t an ordinary eighth grade school tour of our nation’s capital, though. They come by the hundreds of thousands, many of the smartest students in the world, to attend the biennial USA Science & Engineering Festival.

In 2018, attendees wore out the turnstiles.

More than 375,000 students, educators, STEM experts, government, industry and corporate types gathered at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to indulge in their favorite STEM pavilions and topics, spread over 2.4 million square feet. This was a remarkable leap in attendance for an event that only began in 2010 from the vision of serial entrepreneur, the late Larry Bock. Bock’s successor, Marc Schulman, has been Executive Director since 2012.

With the 10 year celebration of the USA Science & Engineering Festival (https:// usasciencefestival.org) coming April 25-26, 2020, we as Media Partner, got in touch with Executive Director Schulman. He spoke of the Festival and its ever-growing reach into classrooms, STEM labs, and, increasingly, into the workplace. Let’s face it: the STEM kids of today are our future workforce.

STEM Today: The USA Science & EngineeringFestival (USASEF) drew more than 375,000 students and adults in 2018.

What impact does this event make on students, educators — and, looking ahead, the workplace our STEM students will define in the 2020s?

Marc Schulman: This event is nothing less than a World’s Fair for students. It really is.

Think of what they’re exposed to at this event.

I’m pretty sure before they come, they’ve never met a geospatial scientist or seen a DaVinci robot. You’re not only seeing every STEM job

8

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

and career opportunity under one roof, but you can spend hours talking to specialists in a particular field, in a particular booth. It’s so inspiring for participants, and now, they’re able to start leaving USASEF and connecting to either school programs, college courses, internships, or career opportunities. It’s a lot more than ‘come to the festival and see all this great technology and go home.’

booth for years, so we’re expanding that out.

STEM Today: What are some of the new pavilions and features you have planned for 2020?

MS: We’ve had any number of organizations and non-profit organizations targeting girls, but we’ve never had an area specifically for them.

We think we can get like-minded organizations to create an area that is girl-focused. That is a major goal for us for 2020. Like you said, there’s huge interest and it’s growing daily. A lot of company workforces are expanding diversity, trying to attract females into their companies.

MS: We’re still working on these, but I can tell you that we will have a Nuclear Energy Pavilion, Chemistry Pavilion, and a Girls in STEM Pavilion. We’re also looking at an Exploration Platform, showing the expansion of our space program. NASA has been our most popular

STEM Today: There’s a big increase in girls and women becoming more engaged in STEM classes and careers, as we’re highlighting with our “Women in STEM” feature (see page 16). What are your plans to highlight girls and women in STEM in 2020?

STEM Today: Let’s get into future workforce.

STEM students’ education is tying more and more to career tracks. How is the U.S. Science and Engineering Festival addressing that?

MS: We encourage exhibitors and speakers to key in on the future of workforce. We are getting away from calling ourselves a STEM outreach event; that’s run its course. We’ve begun concentrating on why the kids are on STEM tracks in school in the first place — for their careers, the future workforce development. We encourage exhibitors to talk about what kids could be working in. At another of our events, X-STEM, we tell speakers to hit on three main things: 1. What got them motivated for their career?

2. What are they working on today?

3. What will they be working on in the future?

STEM Today: It seems like the third question is the departure point.

MS: That’s right. The third piece is what motivates the kids. If you can talk about how Artificial Intelligence will affect the industry, or advanced manufacturing, 3D printing or cloud computing, then that inspires people to go into it. A lot of exhibitors will bring technologies they’re working on. We’re looking to present subjects with stuff that is not only coming to fruition now, but will do so for the next 7 to 10 years.

STEM Today: What about training educators to be more proficient in teaching specific STEM skills? How are schools and teachers better equipping themselves so they can be effective STEM educators in the classroom?

MS: We’re focused on this issue of an Educators Pavilion. I want to do this while maximizing the cool factor of the event. Instead of lecturing students, we put out a survey to the teachers on our list and asked, ‘What would you think is cool?’ They all want workshops to teach the subjects or present them, workshops like hands-on robotics, 3D printing, virtual reality… core STEM specialties.

One of the trends in education is that all of these teachers are trying to teach STEM, in after-school groups or science classes, but it’s outside their educational training and specialties in many cases.

I was recently at UC-San Diego, at an event put on by a local math teacher. He noticed that public schools offered few coding classes. On his own, he picked up a program, taught himself how to code, and created opportunities in his school. After a couple years, the (San Diego Unified School) FALL/WINTER 2019 | STEM TODAY

9

The World’s Biggest Science Festival

District was so impressed with his course that they put it into some of their other schools — but then he had to teach those teachers how to code. We want more teachers to be trained in specific STEM subjects, which increases the resources available to students at the schools.

STEM Today: A growing trend in education, especially at the community college level, is repurposing or even replacing standard two-year curriculum with career-based classes, with a specific focus on STEM tracks. Maricopa County Community College in Arizona replaced or enhanced 1,200 classes in this way. How is USASEF involving itself in this initiative?

MS: More and more companies are talking to schools and colleges about co-writing curriculum. This is a big opportunity for particular companies, because these students with these skills are their future workforce. It’s like creating a feeder system, a farm team if you will, for future employees. Recruiters have started taking on more of a sports marketing mentality, targeting kids as early as high school.

10

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Like you said, we’re seeing entire community colleges revamping their curriculum to accommodate students, companies and these STEM-related subjects, which become job categories. I can see some community colleges becoming trade schools for the digital world, in nontraditional trades.

It’s great for students, too. If they’re scientists with STEM skills, and that’s their career track, they don’t necessarily have to spend $100,000 to $150,000 at a university. They can go to the community college, take courses in their field with curriculum materials specifically developed for career prep, and step into an internship, which often grows into their first career job.

One of the things that’s been lost in our culture, in general, is the Apprentice model. It has been part of how we train and prepare workers for hundreds of years, but colleges and universities with traditional curricula took over it. ■

USASEF Executive Director Marc Schulman is also featured in the Winter 2019-20 issue of our flagship publication, Innovation & Tech Today.

Brain Games: Being Smart Gets Very Entertaining

Keegan-Michael Key (above) will have his hands full with celebrity "brainiacs" and contestants for eight weeks of Brain Games, when they cover many ways we use our brainpower. Key and Correspondent Cara Santa Maria (opposite page, top) work with such stars as Dax Shepard and Kirsten Bell (opposite page, top right), Anthony Anderson (middle), and Rebel Wilson (bottom). Photos: National Geographic/Eric McCandless

Imagine your favorite stars, celebrities and athletes riding in go-karts, performing optical illusions, conducting social experiments, playing interactive games and answering trick questions.

Sounds like a different kind of circus or night at the arcade, right?

Then the curtain opens — and you realize they’re being tested on their brain power. This will be the scene for eight weeks beginning January 20, when the National Geographic Channel presents Brain Games, in a format reimagined from the Emmy-nominated original series that aired from 2011-2016.

Each week, a mosh of public figures known for their intelligence and wit will match up with each other and the public. The guests include

12

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Kids Say The Darnedest Things host and The Last OG co-star Tiffany Haddish, fellow actors Anthony Anderson, Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, Rebel Wilson, actor/musician Jack Black, country music star Meghan Trainor, Shark Tank co-star, AXS-TV CEO and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, and New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, a brilliant player and the NFL record holder in career passing yards and touchdown passes.

Controlling the fun and madness — and escalating it, no doubt — will be the show’s host, the hilarious Keegan-Michael Key. “Our host, Keenan-Michael Key, is perfect for this show,” field correspondent Cara Santa Maria said. “He’s really funny, really smart and

genuinely curious about everything we did in every episode.”

Santa Maria, a rising NatGeo star correspondent and host of the popular Talk Nerdy podcast, relishes her role in Brain Games as the field correspondent. One thing for sure: every segment is entirely different than the one preceding it. All require astute use of the mind.

“This show is different than the Brain Games of the past; it’s a game show version,” Santa Maria explained. “We bring in celebrities to play different games in studio. As the field correspondent, I bring more of the traditional brain games into the mix. The show’s really cool audience-wise, because it’s both for kids and adults, something families will watch together,

but also something kids can watch on their own, and the same for adults.”

To Santa Maria’s point, Brain Games definitely has something for everyone. In a world where we have to monitor more than ever what young people watch, or deal with hundreds of stations lacking any intellectual content, it’s a refreshing switch to a format and activities that can keep any STEM teacher, student or advocate riveted every week. The show breakdown, provided by NatGeo: BATTLE OF THE SEXES: Real-life spouses Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, The Good Place) and Dax Shepard (Bless This Mess) find out how men’s and women’s brains problem solve in contrasting ways.

KIDS VS. GROWN-UPS: Co-stars on the hit ABC sitcom Blackish, Anthony Anderson and Marsai Martin go head-tohead to see how kids’ and grown-ups’ brains work differently.

ATTRACTION: Actress Rebel Wilson (The Hustle, Pitch Perfect) explores the laws of attraction, and the neuroscience behind finding the perfect partner.

OPTICAL DELUSIONS: Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actor Ted Danson (The Good Place), with the Blue Man Group, investigate the science behind fake news.

FALL/WINTER 2019 | STEM TODAY

13

Brain Games: Being Smart Gets Very Entertaining POWER AND PERSUASION: Mark Cuban tackles the brain science behind memory and memorization, and the tricks behind successfully marketing both a business and a product.

MUSIC: Jack Black and Kyle Gass of comic-rock duo Tenacious D, along with Grammy Award winner Meghan Trainor, test the ways in which music affects our brains.

MOVIE MAGIC: Tiffany Haddish delves into the science of filmmaking and the magic of Hollywood, and how our favorite films get us to believe the unbelievable.

PERFORMANCE: Super Bowl champion Drew Brees tests the brain science behind athletic performance.

Within every episode, Santa Maria goes out in the field to create and monitor a task, experience, game or other challenge that relates to the overall theme of the show. As she pointed out, most of the field segments are revelatory — and some downright hilarious.

“I’m in the field once or twice every episode doing demonstrations, tasks, experiments with everyday people,” she said. “We have a really wide range of tasks, because of episode topics. An episode close to my heart is ‘Kids vs. Grown-Ups’, which is our second episode.

For the field assignment (spoiler alert), I led a really cool experiment. We went to a go-cart track, and tested the driving skills of kids and parents. We set up inflatables, cones and other obstacles. The parents smoked the kids because they, well, know how to drive.

Then we switched it up. When the wheel turned right, the cart went left, and vice-versa. Guess which group was more adaptable and made the change faster? I loved how insightful the kids were at handling change.”

Santa Maria also had to handle change during Brain Games — especially in the final episode. After spending the series reporting on the prowess of others, it was her turn in the spotlight. Or underwater, to be more exact.

The stars keep shining in Brain Games, including (top photo to bottom): Ted Danson, Mark Cuban, Tiffany Haddish, Jack Black, and Drew Brees.

Photos National Geographic/Eric McCandless

“In our final show, ‘Performance,’ I did the task — holding my breath underwater. For that, I had a great trainer in Andy Walsh, who works with the Red Bull Performance Team,” she explained. “He helped me learn this, which was tough, because I have almost no athletic ability. I went into a tank of water and held my breath for as long as I could — and had to do it in front of Drew Brees, who’s one of the greatest athletes alive. I was nervous, but he was really impressed.” ■ Tune in on January 20 — and prepare to test your brain in a truly fun and engaging way.

— Robert Yehling

14

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Women of STEM The percentage of girls taking STEM courses continues to grow. How does that translate to careers? We take a look, and visit with five STEM-focused influencers Story By Beth Covington • Interviews By Robert Yehling

Five women of STEM (clockwise from top left): Ananya Asthana, Lori H. Schwartz, Dr. Noel Sauer, Eda Gimenez, and Cara Santa Maria.

Not often have we seen the landscape of education transform like this. We’re not talking about the shifts from public schools to magnet, charter, tech, arts or other private high schools, though that’s certainly happening.

Instead, everywhere you turn, schools are funneling energy and resources into STEM, from middle school robotics classes to overhauled community college curricula and four-year programs that show schools and corporations working together. Not only are science, technology, engineering and mathematics (and the arts, for STEAM fans) teamed in classrooms and courses, but the networking spreads far off-campus. Now, it is totally common for a high school senior to intern for, say, an engineering firm, head to college to take courses possibly written by that firm — and then climb aboard to start a career.

16

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

The song is much the same, from aerospace to architecture, biosciences to robotics, IT to computer coding. However, far more often than not, we hear only boys and men singing it. What does this deepening of STEM into the fabric of our social and national workplace mean for girls and women?

“This is one of the most important issues of our time, and it is urgent,” said Lindsey NefeshClarke, founder of W4, an organization that promotes girls and women in technology. “It has nothing to do with cognitive abilities; that has been proven. It is about consistent, deeply entrenched stereotypes.”

It’s a challenging situation. Girls score as high or higher than boys in STEM testing, they love the thrill of programming voice assistants or building robots to do tasks, and they have truly mad job skills and ability to learn and adapt. In a

perfect world, all things being equal, they’d likely hold half the STEM career jobs.

However, the statistics tell us something else: while women make up 50 percent of the overall labor force, they only add up to 28 percent of total STEM field employment. While the number of women getting STEM degrees has jumped 50 percent in the past decade, only 24 percent of all STEM-field graduates are women.

On top of that, women are only paid 89 percent as much as men in STEM jobs. The first two figures — 28 percent employment, 24 percent graduation — spell out the problem.

The larger problem? Perception. According to all sources interviewed for this story, we as a society still struggle with gender stereotypes.

Not many men view women digging into STEM jobs. It begins in the classroom. A silent hostility ensues, the girls feeling left out or limited, the

How to Make the Most of STEM? Advice from Cara Santa Maria

Percentage of Degrees earned by women in postsecondary institutions in US (2015-16)

Bachelors Masters PhD All STEM Fields 35.5 32.6 33.7 Biological/Biomed 59.9 57.3 53.0 Mathematics/statistics 42.5 41.7 28.5 Physical sciences/ Science technologies 38.8 37.8 32.2 Engineering & technologies 19.7 25.2 23.5 Computer/info science 18.7 30.8 20.1 (Source: National Science Board, Science & Engineering Indicators, Jan. 2018)

boys marching forward into their careers. While it is most apparent in the workplace, it is in the schools and in social perceptions of roles where the underlying problems lie — and where they can be reversed.

“I see those societal issues between girls and STEM courses and career fields. We socialize boys not to say something’s hard or to ask for help — but girls are supposed to think it’s hard and always ask,” says neuroscientist and psychologist Cara Santa Maria, the field correspondent of the National Geographic Channel’s Brain Games series (premieres January 20). “Imagine being a girl in a class, who really wants to learn about science, and every time the teacher asks something, the boys shoot up their hands right away. It reinforces this stereotype, this inherent sexism in our culture. I fell right into that, too. When that happens, girls eventually lose interest because they feel challenged and threatened.”

“The gender disparity in STEM fields has been widely recognized, but few initiatives have been

established at a younger age when girls decide what they want to pursue,” adds Ananya Asthana, the 18-year-old President of Women in STEM, a community connecting STEM students to college and professional mentors and opportunities. “We aim to empower and inspire girls through offering a variety of opportunities at the high school level. We hope that through this program, not only will there be an increased awareness of women’s potential but also that girls will be able to recognize their own.”

Another issue concerns STEM role models for girls. Who are they? Again, men tend to more openly and loudly tout their credentials, even though many of our most influential and actionoriented achievers and thought leaders are women. We’ve also had occasional help from the entertainment world, best case in point UCLAeducated neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, who played Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory. However, the problem falls all the way back to the classroom, according to Sally

1) “Keep your eyes open and attempt to be as open-minded as possible. Lean on your personal, individual skills. If you’re a scientist, and a magician or dancer, an athlete, figure out how to utilize all your skills. Lean on them. Make your work more enjoyable by incorporating these skills into your work.”

2) “Don’t be afraid to go through a new door that opens, whether you pried it open or someone else opened it. Take a new course or a job outside your wheelhouse, or take a trip to a place you never imagined going. Life is a discovery and a journey, and rarely do people end up doing what they thought they were going to do while in high school.”

3) “You are alive today. Life does not start after the education ends or you’ve established yourself in your career. Kids get so caught up in ‘once I get out of school… once I settle in…’ Don’t go there. Start living now. Life happens. You might write a book, help make a movie, experience tragedy, love and joy, or get married while in college, even have a kid.

It’s a negative psychological block to delay living until we think we’re prepared to live. Your life doesn’t start at 40. It starts when you come out of the womb.”

FALL/WINTER 2019 | STEM TODAY

17

Women of STEM

McKinley, GM for technology and corporate responsibility at Microsoft.

“Girls want more role models. Where are the women STEM teachers? Girls are more interested in hands-on experience; they want to see the life applications of what they are learning. We need to focus on this,” she told the 2018 Global Women’s Forum in Paris.

The jobs and careers are there for women.

Millions of them. One of the hidden truths of our nation’s low unemployment rate is that the unemployment level for high-skilled technical and scientific positions (translation: STEM) is still quite high. “There are so many jobs that need to be filled in STEM areas now, and we just need to do a better job of communicating between organizations, schools or job counseling offices, and the students or young STEM specialists,” says Marc Schulman, Executive Director of the USA Science and Engineering Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of STEM-focused students, educators, industry pros and influencers. “There’s huge interest. Because of that, a lot of company workforces are expanding diversity, trying to attract females into their companies.”

Adds CNN Tech Correspondent and The Tech Cat podcast host Lori H. Schwartz, “I really think this has to come from the top down. I truly believe if Hollywood showcases more women in those roles, then young girls will see what’s possible and drive towards it. I think employees, people officers, and the C-suite have to mandate more gender equality. They need to work at it and make the effort to balance. Make sure that all genders are in all committees, boardrooms, and jobs. Keep it balanced. It’s extra work, but it’s got to be done, and be culturally driven at companies. Then continue to grow interest for young girls with education programs, outside of school if necessary.”

On top of all of this, our polarized society is also split down the middle when it comes to education. Some continue to subscribe to the age-old model of going to college and getting a four-year degree, while others feel that no such education is necessary. While a growing middle ground is proving itself invaluable in today’s technology-driven fields — a STEM education,

18

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Photo: iStockphoto.com

related courses in college or trade schools, internship or job at a desired company at the same time — it is the large swath of the country holding fast on traditional gender roles and limited education that concerns Santa Maria most.

“Unfortunately, these are strange times. Today, the societal portion of science, technology, engineering and math and especially learning in an academic environment is not always appreciated,” she said. “It’s sometimes shut down. But whatever some in our society do to try to limit us, we as a people are too interested and too resilient. Now we’re seeing massive

gender shifts in traditionally male fields, and we’re seeing more diversity and voices in these fields. And more people are attending college than ever.”

How do girls and women get to the point of complete STEM equality — and forging their own trails? We turned to five women helping to lead the way through their stories, careers and examples as role models: Cara Santa Maria; Lori H. Schwartz; Ananya Asthana; Eda Gimenez, the Strategy Manager for the Buncee creation and communication tool for schools; and Noel Sauer, VP-Research for Cibus, a pioneer in precision gene-editing. ■

Ananya Asthana

Founder/Executive Director, Women in STEM | Senior, University of Chicago Lab High School

Empowering and encouraging high school girls to be a part of the movement to increase female representation in STEM. More and more leaders and professional women in STEM fields are circling back to mentor young women and students now charting their courses into the 2020s. In Chicago, Ananya Asthana isn’t waiting so long to reach out to others. She’s not even waiting until college.

Ananya, the Founder and Executive Director of Women in STEM (www.womeninstem.org), is a visionary in the Greta Thunberg sense: a high school student touching the world and changing lives with her mission. In her case, it’s bridging the gap between social justice and academic fields for tomorrow’s women STEM professionals. With 65 percent of girls and women looking for jobs that help others, according to a Microsoft study, the combination of social justice-innovation-STEM is imperative to promote, in her view.

In the three years since she founded WiSTEM, “which I thought was gonna be this 10-person club in my school,” the community has grown to 35 schools and more than 1,000 students in 13 states and three countries. This visionary STEM community comes complete with a top-notch interactive online platform and a host of programs. WiSTEM supports several programs at the high school level, including bringing in guest speakers, and partnering with universities to match high school students with college mentors.

“I felt like there was a lack of girls in STEM extra-curriculars and advanced STEM classes at my school,” Ananya says. “That was surprising to me, especially going to a pretty rigorous academic school, and I was discouraged by not having upperclassmen I could really look up to. I started reaching out to other schools in the Chicagoland area, and they said they noticed similar issues, so I eventually drafted a chapter starter kit and sent out a ton of emails and texts to girls I knew at different schools. The immediate interest was shocking.

20

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

“Little to no schools had active women in STEM clubs, which were providing social networks and tangible opportunities, raising awareness, absolutely important jumping-off points for advocacy. In high school, everyone’s so busy it’s difficult to seek out the opportunities that don’t come around naturally.

Now I’m meeting with a lot of consultants, marketing people and entrepreneurship experts to see how we can further develop this.”

Ananya spent two years developing WiSTEM, holding more than 100 meetings with STEM educators and career professionals. She did this while carrying a robust, STEM-based academic workload. She also serves as the president of her school’s Model UN, in which students debate global issues and form coalitions with other high school students, like ambassadors do in the UN General Assembly.

Another central piece of WiSTEM is the mentorship program between high school and college students. Ananya has built upon the community service-internship requirement in many high schools, and taken it to the next level while making it STEM-specific. She described the program by relating her friend’s experience.

“She was looking for an internship or a research opportunity over the summer. She couldn’t find anything, as a sophomore going into her junior year,” Ananya said. “It’s really hard to find a professional with actual research lab experience, but her mentor said that she’d look around and ask her advisors. She got a sixweek internship and now is set on studying what she researched that summer.

“We’re trying to seek out more company partnerships. We have a lot of institutional support from various universities, but we know that diversity in STEM is an initiative that most major companies are looking at now and have been for awhile. We want to make partnerships.

It’s a really amazing experience to connect with

companies that you wouldn’t even know have an interest in girls in STEM — and then realize they do.”

Ananya echoes the concerns of STEM leaders, innovators and career professionals such as Noel Sauer, Cara Santa Maria, Eda Gimenez and Lori H. Schwartz, that not enough is being done to reach out and connect with girls before they leave high school — or, as Schwartz feels, at even younger ages. “If you don’t connect with girls in high school, it’s very hard for them to find STEM-based careers,” Ananya says. She speaks both at a peer-to-peer and business level about the “situation on the ground”, as it were, with a clarity that reads like a social justice and innovation roadmap for high school girls everywhere.

“There needs to be more of an effort to make sure women feel confident in their abilities, supplemented by rigorous training and development of technical skills, through other organizations that work in providing coding training and math competitions,” she explains.

“Combine that with confidence building and empowerment. We need some sort of support network for these young women to feel confident in themselves, and that is what WiSTEM provides. We’re moving in the direction of innovation, which is always moving at an exponential growth rate. Women need to be a part of that discussion, otherwise a lot of our products, health care and business opportunities end up being catered to and by men.”

As a voice for her generation, Ananya is equally bold and confident when recommending how today’s teachers can attune more to the future needs of STEM students — and how those teachers can adjust their priorities to give girls the best chance moving forward. She opens with a hot-button topic recounted by professionals in STEM fields —

the need to de-emphasize test- and memorization-based teaching in the classroom.

“I have been fortunate, always gone to a very progressive school,” she says. “I don’t think that I have done a lot of rote memorization, constant standardized tests and worksheets. Recently, one of my teachers asked us about this: ‘Like what do you guys think you bring to the table if you don’t do worksheets and rote memorization?’ She is a big proponent of interactive learning and wanted to know what we saw as our value as students who don’t do conventional school work.

“Our ambassadors at WiSTEM have incredible communication and leadership skills, and the ability to express themselves eloquently. I want all girls to have this. I think teachers can really help and encourage it by giving students enough control over the ability to express their ideals, while guiding them in the directions in which they know will promote growth. You know, challenge their ideas and interact with perspectives that they hadn’t considered, so that they can ultimately develop skills that are useful, like articulating themselves, collaborating and building upon each others’ ideas.

“Another thing is risk-taking. As girls, we’re told we are protected, we don’t need to take risks, risks are not good. That’s scary. If we believe this, we won’t take as many risks — and risk-taking is so important. Creating an environment where kids aren’t afraid to fail builds perseverance and translates into succeeding and adapting. These soft skills will help, regardless of what field girls go into,” she adds.

Ananya plans to keep WiSTEM growing forward as a high school-run community. While she will stay on as a supervisor and mentor, she’s busy working out the transition to a new executive director as she heads onto college to focus on economics and international relations, with an emphasis on social innovation, entrepreneurship and business-building.

“I love just creating all the possibilities that weren’t there at the beginning, but could be there in five minutes from now,” she says. “That really makes me excited about the future, not just for my ventures, but ventures everywhere. If I can be doing this, imagine the number of innovators creating things right at this moment that can change our lives tomorrow, or in a year or two.

That’s amazing.”

She would know. ■ FALL/WINTER 2019 | STEM TODAY

21

Cara Santa Maria

National Geographic Channel | Neuropsychologist • Science Communicator • Talk Nerdy Podcast Host • Social Scientist

Cara Santa Maria never imagined herself a scientist. Had STEM been featured during her growing-up years, she probably would have shied away.

“I’m the classic example of what girls struggle with in school, being Cara Santa Maria on the Science or Fiction panel victims of various at New York Comic Con stereotype in October 2018. threads,” she says.

Wikimedia| Rhododendrites “I loved to read books and engage in school, but science classes were hard, and math classes were hard. I mean, I went to college to study vocal jazz. I thought to myself, maybe I’m not good at science, maybe it’s not for me.”

And yet, here we are. Cara is riding a science-inspired wave as fulfilling as the ocean swells near her L.A. home. She’s the field correspondent for the National Geographic Channel’s Brain Games series, editor of the 2019 NatGeo Almanac, a neuropsychologist nearing her Ph.D., and creator-host of the longform podcast Talk Nerdy (https://www. carasantamaria.com/podcast), nearing its 300th episode. It all started with a blog for the Huffington Post in 2010. She is persuasive and informative in her TV and podcast programs — and maybe the friendliest, most inviting advocate for girls in STEM out there. Right down to her hip style, distinctive tattoos and insatiable curiosity for how things work.

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s a personality trait, but really, it’s in all of us innately,” she says of her curiosity.

22

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

“Babies are curious. Kids are curious.

That’s how we experience the world and learn. Luckily, I have a job that fosters curiosity deep down inside. I hope everyone feels fundamentally curious; it’s a basic function of human experience.

Why do we explore the cosmos? Why is our medicine so advanced? Because we explore to find answers.”

The issue of girls and young women taking up STEM studies and careers impassions her. As a social scientist, Cara focuses on ways to elevate the playing field, forging more paths and possibilities. The love of learning and exploring radiate from her, whether interviewing an astrophysicist on Talk Nerdy, or digging into a field challenge on Brain Games.

“For me, it’s really exciting to experience something first-hand,” she says. “I realize I’m in a very privileged position in the work I do, so I’m going to give people the best experiences I can through my work, my podcast and the NatGeo shows I work on, like Brain Games. I get to go to great places, experience different cultures, talk to so many cool people and learn through their eyes and minds.”

Her career path reflects the future for current students in a central way: it’s not one path.

It’s several. She’s gone from voice major to psychologist to science communicator to TV correspondent to writer/editor to neuroscientist in just 15 years. She’s tenacious, brilliant and quick to spot change and adapt to it, all badass qualities she inspires internationally.

“I came into STEM from a meandering, non-traditional path. But that’s today’s path. The world is changing. I mean, the days of going to college, getting a degree, putting in 40 years as a loyal employee and leaving with the pension are basically over — especially for people in school today. We have to be really scrappy; we’ll have a half-dozen careers, maybe more, in our lives. We have to wear different hats, be more multi-disciplined, and have more life and business skills.” ■

Host Keegan-Michael Key during a segment with field host Cara Santa Maria. National Geographic/Eric McCandless

National Geographic/Eric McCandless

FALL/WINTER 2019 | STEM TODAY

23

Dr. Noel Sauer

VP Research, Cibus | Microbiology • Molecular Genetics • Career STEM Mentor

Dr. Noel Sauer thrives on her passions, whether competing in half-marathons in Southern California, raising her teenage daughters, or creating hardier agricultural crops in these trying times.

The Vice President of Research for Cibus lives in the commitment she made to herself as a young biological sciences major at USC: try many different paths before connecting with one you love — and then master it.

“All parts of science excite me,” she says.

“I was divided between doing academic research and getting into biotech, but I chose biotech because you can take the science you learned and quickly apply it to make everything better — people, the environment. It became my passion to try to make things better.

“I’d always left myself open for the path I would eventually take. Different experiences along the way helped navigate me in the right direction. I didn’t box myself in, but followed my heart to what excited me. Which is what I’m doing today.”

24

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Noel oversees 80 scientists at Cibus, a biotech company committed to developing hardier and more sustainable plants by working with the plant’s own DNA. This non-transgenic process does not introduce GMOs or other foreign substances into the native DNA. Instead, they work to make what she calls “spelling changes,”

altering the DNA ever so slightly from within to create plants able to thrive despite climate change, drought and ever-increasing population (the UN estimates global population will grow to 10 billion by 2050).

“Climate change is a defining issue of our time,” she says. “For agriculture, that means understanding how plants can adapt to shifting weather patterns.

Cibus wants to be part of that solution by developing plants that can thrive and provide higher yields despite these changes.”

Noel’s road to Cibus would make a great page one in a STEM playbook.

After falling in love with science during a high school biology class, she graduated with honors from USC in biological science. She moved on to Harvard Medical School, where she received a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. She worked for several biotech companies, refining her passion, then moved to San Diego 10 years ago to head up research at Cibus “and get out of the cold East Coast

Where do you want to be?

Don’t take the same old journey.

Be somewhere genuine.

Be somewhere amazing.

Be changed.

playanydaygetawaycation

Call for your free Visitor Guide 800.828.4244 | Vis itH e nd e r so nv il l e N C .org

Dr. Noel Sauer

winters and into a place where I can run and be warm everyday,” she chuckles.

Now, she gets to pass along what she experienced.

Her two daughters are preparing for college, and she offers them and other young women sage advice: “Don’t box yourself in at 16; we all change over time. Be open to possibility,” she says. “Take a lot of general ed courses on diverse subjects to find what makes you passionate. It’s the one time in your life you can do that. Then you can figure out for yourself what you’ll be passionate about. When you do that, you will work hard, be happy, and eventually be successful. Master what you’re really good at and apply it. Be nimble, flexible, and able to do the jobs of the future.”

Not surprisingly, Noel mentors young women moving into STEM careers — a calling she feels more leaders should undertake to increase confidence and participation in the sciences. Along the way, she realized something that added to her passion to mentor.

“The big difference between young men and young women going into STEM careers is this: If a male looks at a job opportunity and feels he has 75 percent of the requirements down, he will go for that job. A female usually won’t; it has to be a 100 percent match,” she explains. “As a mentor, I’ve been making sure females go at 75 percent, and I’m trying to get young women in STEM to have confidence to pursue their dreams.

“It’s important for females to mentor other females in STEM. I work a lot in that area.

As leaders, we can help the next generation to rise.” ■

26

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Revive Your 9 to 5

ADJUSTABLE. VERSATILE. FUN.

• Brings movement into a regularly static workday • Provides cushioning and support while standing • Fully adjustable - each user can customize their experience • Sleek look that will work with any decor

Encoura ge Mi c ®

Ideal for Sit-Stand Desk Use rs

Fitterfirst Active Office Board

ASK AN EXPERT: Joan Vernikos, PhD, former Director of the Life Sciences Division at NASA & author of Sitting Kills - Moving Heals and Designed to Move!

You do not need to be 80 before your balance is affected. It happens a lot sooner and much faster if you spend a lot of hours each day sitting. What can you do? First become aware that you are moving less than you used to. You can also get yourself an Active Office Board.

There are many forms of boards you can stand on. In my experience, none match the ingenuity and versatility of the Active Office Board. Its simplicity makes it usable for a few minutes every time you stand so that you can make it a habit. If you use a stand-up desk use the board to stand on. You can play around and find your own best way to use it all day. Just keep moving. Joan’s Book is available to purchase at fitter1.com.

† †

Classic Balance Board 16”

S tability A gility M obility

Practice STABILITY in daily living to improve AGILITY at play and to enhance MOBILITY for life.

Tri Level Slant Board

100s of Great Active Office & Balance Products

DuraBall Classic Ball Chair

www.fitter1.com 1-800-fitter1

e ur

ACTIVE OFFICE

ments & Proper o ve Pos M t ro

Lori H. Schwartz, The Tech Cat CNN Tech Correspondent • Author/Storyteller • Visionary • Podcast Host

When Lori H. Schwartz talks, the tech world listens.

When she shows up at major trade shows, companies large and small gravitate to her.

When she tests out new technologies for herself or her daughter, she shares what’s coming next.

voice assistants, she bristles when toy manufacturers pander to stereotyped images of girls and boys in their products.

One example is pink Legos.

“I remember my daughter playing with them, and boys in second grade saying, ‘those aren’t Legos!

They’re girl Legos.’ That’s a problem. Another thing is that, if there are prominent female characters in franchise shows, you see very few available toys or merchandise around them.

Rey was the hero of The Force Awakens and Last Jedi, from the new Star Wars releases. Can you find her action figure or doll anywhere? No.

Lori is one of the greatest tech forecasters alive. The author of the forthcoming The Tech Cat, an extension of her popular Voice of America and iTunes podcast of the same name, the CNN and Headline News correspondent has influenced hundreds of companies for 25 years with her way of weaving technology into our lives and businesses through storytelling.

Pretty amazing for a Long Island girl who grew up thinking she’d produce or direct movies — only to find herself a heroine to STEM and tech influencers and students, among others. “I took Home Economics because that’s what you did as a girl. It was dumb!” she recalls. “Personal computing wasn’t big yet. I would have taken a coding class, for sure. Coding is language, the door to everything moving forward.

“By the way, I can’t cook, so that Home Ec class was a waste — but I know how to use data storage solutions,” she adds with a chuckle.

To Lori, the change begins with girls and young women — and their parents and adult influencers — changing how society has traditionally thought of them, something she carved out on her own in the 1990s.

28

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

“Not all female toys have to be pink, and female characters don’t have to wear pink clothes. You don’t have to make things so gender-colored. Mattel is one company that’s gotten the message to some degree. Barbies today are action heroes, astronauts, steeped in careers, not just buxom blondes.”

“When kids and young people see a certain representation of roles in the media, they’re more apt to create their dreams around those roles, and sink into them, good or bad,” she says.

“When they see more coverage about becoming scientists or engineering aspirants, they don’t go forward with that early seed of doubt. I want to make sure girls and young women are represented more in roles that speak to that. We need to plant that seed.”

She gets particularly passionate about toys and merchandise. Amidst a world of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, computer coding and

As a college teacher and parent, Lori is dialed into classroom dynamics. She’s adamant about opening the floodgates for girls in STEM fields.

“We need to remove the lines between ‘guys’ classes and ‘girls’ classes and create a curriculum that serves both, across the board, whether it’s robotics, coding, space systems, AI, or producing videos,” she says. “One thing I’m really impressed by is how the upcoming generation is solidly focused on social good. I’ve seen a lot of demos/prototypes of socially good products, things relating to bringing water to villages, electricity, finding jobs, finding meds… you name it. Social good is the theme.” ■

HOME CINEMA LIKE NEVER BEFORE

Kaleidescape provides handcrafted movie content and beautifully designed movie players to power the finest luxury home theaters in the world.

We start with a movie’s authoritative reference file, known as a mezzanine file, which comes directly from the studio. Then we apply our proprietary processing to produce a Kaleidescape source file of the highest fidelity available. The result of this process is a downloadable file that enables a Kaleidescape player to present the movie “the way the director intended.”

Eda Gimenez Buncee | Environmental Scientist • Educator Like many of today’s educational influencers, Eda Gimenez sits in a career far different from where she began. She studied to become an environmental scientist with a communications emphasis, but now works on creative collaboration between teachers, students and parents through the Buncee educational platform (www.buncee.com).

When you drill down a bit, though, Eda’s larger vision plays into both: promoting sustainable solutions and learning on a large scale, one person at a time.

“I feel like I’m helping people build their voices,” she says. “One of my favorite projects is Skype Buncee Buddies, where we connect classrooms around the world and discuss sustainable development goals. We’ve done Ocean Days, supported Earth Day. We create projects that show different ways they want to solve problems.

“Because of the global connections, students might be sharing something only they know — something students from other countries certainly don’t know. It gets them to think deeper about the challenges and how to communicate the solutions.”

Eda grew up in New York, always thinking of what she wanted to become. She was introduced to STEM in middle school, through a tornado warning that flashed through Valley Stream, NY. “It freaked me out,” she recalls.

“People were talking about environmental science, the changing environment. Was there a connection between it and these storms? It got me into STEM.” In high school, her larger potential began to unfold: creating and/or taking on big projects and seeing how they connected with individuals and large groups, societies or countries.

“I looked online for projects on the environment, saw stuff to raise awareness for kids, and started seeing volunteer opportunities,” she said. “I started getting involved, becoming more aware, then realized I could do some projects myself, like walk around the local park and turn in plastic. By college, I’d

30

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

done so much generic research that I knew I wanted to be in an environmental field.”

Once there, Eda received advice that is a foundation of her professional life. “I had a professor who told me, ‘I’m 70, and if I could look back, I would have not only done the science I’ve done, but I would have studied working with governments and communications. You have to communicate the science you do.’”

She went on to earn a Master’s Degree from Columbia University in Environmental Science and Policy, with a focus on Sustainability and Communications. She worked on sustainable human development in Basque country, helped build fertilizer distribution networks in Africa, and engaged in a waste management research project in the Philippines, where her mother was raised. Part of her study was to see how farmers unintentionally contribute to pollution and deforestation.

Next up was a dream job for any young scientist-communicator: researcher at the

National Science Foundation. “I thought I’d be there forever,” she says.

“I worked with the mathematical and physical sciences division, interfacing with people like NASA and The White House. I didn’t have a lot of experience in the STEM space, so I wanted to bridge the gap for myself and students.”

That’s what she does at Buncee, one of the most forward-thinking online platforms in education. She feels that Buncee’s take-charge approach for students is critical for their futures in today’s rapidly evolving work environment.

“This generation is probably going to change careers five or six times in their lifetime,” she says. “We need to look at school as a place to discover. What helped me the most were professors not focused on grades or test scores, but opening my eyes to new challenges and the world. What we do on the Buncee platform is part of that: inviting students, adults and teachers to explore new challenges and new ways to communicate and collaborate to solve them.” ■

Introducing the

LumiCharge II LED Desk Lamp Charging Station

Convenience shines with the LumiCharge II, the second generation versatile LED desk lamp that provides striking functionality, illumination, and efficiency.

The LumiCharge II offers Qi wireless charging, universal phone charging dock, calendar display, built-in motion sensor, eye friendly LED lighting, and more!

This smart LED desk lamp boasts an adjustable neck for optimal directional lighting and functions as a nightlamp, reading desk lamp, or general area lamp. A stylish base offers an elegant touch system for navigating control options. Available in Black, White, and Silver.

FEATURES INCLUDE: Built-in 10W fast charging wireless charger // Universal phone charging dock // Accommodates cell phones with covers* // 1 USB port // 300-degree light area coverage // Front access setup buttons // Dimmable front display // Preprogrammed with daylight savings in North America and some European countries // 3 light colors – soft white, bright white, soft yellow // Multiple brightness levels // Remembers last light setting // Motion sensor nightlight // Metallic middle and upper arm

rs Today early adopte Innovation & Tespchecial offer: save with this

1

RESERVATION

$ + 40 %

E OFF FINAL PRIC

day!

preorder yours to

elumicharge.com Email sales@thlink to our to receive your d the campaign site ancode. special discount

THELUMICHARGE.COM *Can accommodate approx. 90% of cell phone covers in the market depending on thickness

In Our Next Issue

2020 USASEF We launch into 2020 with the expanded format of STEM Today by previewing the 2020 USA Science and Engineering Festival. What will be the featured exhibits and pavilions? Who will be presenting? As proud charter media partners, we give you a full rundown of the world’s largest STEM-based convention and its dual missions of promoting STEM education and career tracks.

An Education Platform For Student-Led Collaboration At the 2019 Digital Book World Expo in Nashville, attendees were enthralled by Buncee. Students drive their own projects on this educational, creativity and business platform while connecting with others throughout the world. It is being used by more than 600,000 students, schools and districts. Founder/CEO Marie Arturi and Strategy Manager Eda Gimenez talk with Executive Editor Robert Yehling about Buncee’s success story and vision for the future of education and collaboration.

Fortnite… in the Classroom?

Many parents and educators are concerned about their teens’ obsession with Fortnite, the online game with nearly 250 million players worldwide. Those adults will be happy to know Epic Games is jumping in to work with Fortnite in education. An educator in the middle of it all, our Senior Writer Mike Washburn, talks with leaders at Epic Games while offering up some great educator examples.

An Early Start to Robotics Thanks to Dean Kamen and the LEGO Leagues, robotics teams thrive at tens of thousands of middle and high schools worldwide. It’s a good thing, since robots, drones and automation will be central to technology and society in the 2020s. Which leads to the next question: how early do we introduce kids to robotics? Subject expert Mike Washburn reports on education robotics at the K-2 level.

Looking Back: The Decade STEM Blossomed Correspondent Erin James takes a look back at the 2010s, the decade in which STEM blossomed as a central focus of education. We review the milestones and talk with champions of STEM’s presence — and where it will go in the 2020s.

We present these stories, along with our new-andimproved EduBits section, game, platform and educational software reviews, and much more in STEM Today’s first issue of the 2020s.

32

STEM TODAY | FALL/WINTER 2019

Move

Brilliant sound anywhere The durable, battery-powered smart speaker for outdoor and indoor listening.

ASK FOR

Google and Google Home are trademarks of Google LLC.