JerseySTEM engineering team wins 3rd in FutureCity championship

This week, JerseySTEM students Aiden Bernstein, Sophia Melgarejo, Tania Mouline, and Natalie Yen won third place at the Future City National Finals, a STEM engineering competition held in Washington D.C. with competitors from 47 states.

This all-girl team, 7th graders from Chatham Middle School, their coach, and their mentors earned their spot in this nationwide competition just last month when the students placed first in Future City’s New Jersey regional competition at Rutgers University. The team beat out over 100 other middle school teams to represent New Jersey at the Future City Finals. They also represent JerseySTEM, a nonprofit organization committed to closing the gender, innovation, and opportunity gaps in STEM education, as well as serving 25,000 girls by 2025.

Future City is a project-based learning program where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades imagine, research, design, and build cities of the future. The theme for this year’s competition was Powering Our Future. Teams were tasked with using the engineering design process as a framework to plan cities of the future and demonstrate solutions to sustainability issues. The team’s city called “Kaifukuryoku,” which means “resilience” in Japanese, included a resilient power grid that can withstand and quickly recover from the impacts of a natural disaster.

After developing a Future City program at its R&D hub in the Chatham-Summit area, JerseySTEM is now engaged with the NJ Chapter of Future City and professional organizations such as ASCE in bringing this this program to a number of underserved communities, including Newark, Paterson, Dover, and Elizabeth.

Peter Tarhanidis, a former coach himself and board member of JerseySTEM, is excited about the teams’ success. He is also eager for JerseySTEM to join forces with New Jersey based engineering consultancies, utilities and infrastructure companies and other sponsors to bring FutureCity to underserved communities in New Jersey. Says Tarhanidis, “The NJ chapter of Future City has done a tremendous job growing participation and interest in more than 100 schools. We will build on this success to bring the program to kids, and girls in particular, who do not yet have access to coaches, mentors, and resources to run this program in their community.”

The nationally recognized middle school team agrees, and has decided to use the $1,000 prize money, awarded to them by PSEG at the state level competition, to further JerseySTEM’s efforts. The third place at the nationals comes with an additional $2,000 to support the students initiative.