Scholarship Recipients

From Diya’s inclusion notes:

Propelled to pursue further, I explored the CS pathway at Sunset High School along with my IB Diploma. On the first day, I faced the harsh reality of “women in STEM.” Walking into my class, I saw three girls in my class, a number that remained in single digits over four years. From there, I made it my goal to reach more women and hence became part of my school’s inclusion campaign for CS. Over the next four years, I conducted various seminars, promotional shoots, and events to raise awareness about the inclusive CS program offered.

In this program, taking HTML, CSS, Java, Python, and C++ courses helped me understand diverse approaches to problem-solving. Beyond the classroom, I sought opportunities to apply my skills in real-world contexts. Participating in Serious Programming Workshops with Dr. Mark Galassi from Los Alamos National Laboratory expanded my perspective, covering topics such as Cryptography, the Birthday Paradox, Phylogeny, Natural Language Processing, Neural Networks, and Advanced Plotting.

Kevin, on the importance of community:

Through continually designing, launching, redesigning, and relaunching our rocket, I learned many vital technology skills. Far more than an arts and crafts project, I now have technical skills like Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), I can solder and program microcontrollers, I know how to operate CNC machines, laser cutters, and 3D printers, and I know how to work with my hands to bring a design into the real world. In addition, I also learned about the fundamental process of engineering, involving rapid iteration and learning from previous mistakes. For example, one of our rocket’s motor mounts wasn’t supported with sufficient structure, causing the motor to break way inside the body tube and explode—teaching us to secure high-force areas with more structure than previously anticipated.

However, the most important thing I learned was teamwork and leadership, eventually allowing me to grow this one small rocket project into the Olympia Aerospace Club, a 170+ member student-run organization dedicated to providing students with the necessary tools to explore and learn about flight. As president and founder of this organization, I aim to inspire more students to pursue careers in STEM, which I’ve done through organizing a total of 10 American Rocketry Challenge teams, hosting guest speakers from NASA and the University of Washington, putting on school-wide launch events, and even providing free private pilot lessons provided by one of our sponsors to expose students to aerospace. The world needs more scientists and engineers than ever to address diverse issues, ranging from the climate crisis to the future of space travel. I’m fortunate to have built a community of those who share my passion—a community which, in turn, has shaped me. While I may leave the Olympia Aerospace Club behind as I graduate, I am confident that this organization and its lasting impact will carry onward.

Kosha’s neighbor—suffering from dementia—insprired her project work:

During high school, I immersed myself in the world of AI. Through volunteering at a memory care center, I experienced the seniors’ struggles with dementia. I studied brain morphology and neurodegeneration for months and created solutions for early diagnosis and accurate profiling. Finally, I created MemSpark: a fun VR-based game therapy that slowed dementia progression and was four times cheaper than mainstream solutions. Although the journey to creating effective dementia care is a long one, I am proud that I have taken the first steps in building equitable solutions.

To design this project, I studied brain morphology and neurodegeneration to create a therapy that affected dementia at its root cause. Since decline could affect any part of the brain, I designed a novel set of games that exercised every part of the brain. For example, the frontal lobe which controls decision making was exercised through time-bound puzzle completion, while the cerebellum which controls coordination was exercised through a game of popping balloons. Eight serious games were designed to exercise all cognitive functions by considering a set of promotive factors (immersion, confidence, focus) and preventive factors (anxiety, frustration, self-pity).

On how this scholarship will assist her future goals:

While researching about dementia for last three years, I became interested in studying the vast applicability of statistical modeling techniques, neurodegeneration, neural networks and deep learning. I concluded that early detection and diagnosis of diseases addresses only a subset of healthcare challenges. There a lot to explore in the area of prevention, monitoring, and cure of diseases.

Receiving this scholarship will pair me with the best opportunities for education, research, and innovation. I will have unparalleled opportunity to get mentored by the faculty conducting world-class research using their partnerships with industry and the business community. Attending a university
where I will have access to diverse research groups conducting pioneering research in all areas of artificial intelligence including robotics, machine learning, healthcare and NLP will take my knowledge beyond bounds.

From Kevin’s learning-journey notes:

I come from a world where rent and groceries can crush any dream. Even with technological giants such as Boeing and Amazon in my backyard, opportunities do not come easily in my low-income community of color. However, I never let these barriers suppress my interest in computer science. With my curiosity burning, I depended on visits from my tech-enthusiast cousins and the tenacity of my immigrant parents to navigate around the resource gaps in my community. Although my first destination entailed programming a Flappy Bird replica at a family reunion, this small project paved the way for citywide initiatives such as UpSTREAM, which I founded to provide youth in my community with accessible,
culturally-relevant STEM resources.

Layla’s note on the excitment of learning:

For the ACPE scholarship, I’m choosing to highlight my computational learning module that analyzed different glioblastoma treatments in comparison to each other, using R. This was research that I did over the summer and then decided to replicate it into a learning module for others to try. My main goal was to provide the research experience to individuals without access to research mentors or institutions, but
who still wanted to learn more about computational biology and modeling. Through ISB’s Systems Education and Expirence program, my module will be taught at schools across the nation. As I made this project, I remember spending hours pouring over my desk trying to relearn HTML and R at
the same time, and as stressful as it was, it was the most excited I’d been about learning in a long time. The summer before, at Girls Who Code, I briefly learned some HTML, but last summer, I immersed myself in the syntax and complexities of the language. I remember at the end, after looking at my finished project and website, I felt a sense of pride. They represented hours of work spent over a computer screen, questions answered on Stack Overflow, and a culmination of camaraderie and friendship between my coworkers-turned-friends.

Janey Nguyen’s piano-project origin story:

My recently completed project is a miniature wooden piano that uses Arduino software and circuits to produce sound. My goal was to recreate a miniature version of a piano that is playable, produces sound, and has adjustable volume. A majority of the projects that I create are part of assignments in my engineering classes. Oftentimes, the core requirements are to employ a specific function, engineering principle, or a machine or program that we learned about in class to the project. However, we are mostly given creative freedom on what we’d like to make.

Therefore, I’ve tried to turn away from the more typical project designs by using required parts to add movement to unconventional machines. My designs are inspired by objects that are part of my daily life and incorporating engineering and design elements to create functional machines. These objects are often replicated from memory, and I use what I know of the function of the object to decide the simple machines that can be used to add axes of motion to them. Part of the inspiration for this specific project comes from my own experience as a piano player of many years.