Malden Girls Learn About Robotics, Engineering Careers

[Editor's note: The following was submitted by Jayne Brown.]

Whiz kids: Olivia Bittle, Meghan Brown, Grace Cappuccio, Victoria DeVita, Carol Lam, Kitty Luo, Emily Mo, Sumya Mohiuddin, Myle Nguyen and Robyn Santo, and MHS students Nina Ho, Karina Hong, Vivian Le, Samantha Li, Hakima Missbah, Stacey Sousa, Anna Tse,  Wendy Tse and Yan Yan.

Whiz kids' school: Malden High School and Linden Middle School

Whiz kids' accomplishment: Attended program encouraging young women to pursue careers in engineering.

Whiz kids' key to success: Consider a future career in the fast-growing and financially rewarding field of robotics engineering. That was the message given to a select group of female students from Malden’s Linden Middle School and juniors from Malden High School at the “Tenth Annual Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” held at the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA. Nitsch Engineering of Boston, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Dana Hall School for Girls sponsored this March 29, 2011 event.  

Ten girls from the Linden Middle School and nine juniors from Malden High School attended the daylong program along with other female middle and high schoolers from all over New England. These academically talented young ladies were introduced to the exciting and promising field of robotics and its applications in the modern world including business communication, crime scene investigation, search-and-rescue missions, medical innovations, and household uses.  

The students used computer-aided engineering programs to design and build virtual robots and participated in the hands-on creation of their original designs. They were given the opportunity to examine and interact with actual award-winning robots used by NASA in past space missions. In the afternoon, the young women attended a panel discussion with female professors and engineering students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s FIRST Robotics Resource Center. Malden Public School’s talented and promising girls were strongly encouraged to pursue their interest in Science and Math with a potential career in the exciting and expanding field of robotics engineering.