I am dedicated to increasing the presence of women and minorities in STEM, and I therefore regularly volunteer for STEM outreach programs. At the STEM Santa Fe Pathways for Girls Conference, I taught a coding workshop to 5th-8th grade girls in which they created their own sticker art to take home. I additionally taught this workshop for the New Mexico GEAR UP Girls STEM Conference for female or non-binary students. I also spent two years as a FIRST Lego League Explore Team coach where I taught fundamentals of engineering, design, and problem-solving using LEGO bricks and Education WeDo 2.0 coding to 6-8 year olds. I am always delighted by the student feedback, especially the students who hadn’t previously realized that STEM and art have powerful creative synergy.
For academic service, I was on the UNM STEM Research Symposium, a conference organized by and for graduate students, organizing committee for two years and served as the conference chair. As chair, I coordinated the conference with UNM graduate engineering recruiting to showcase the research to prospective students, a first for the conference. I also involved scientists and engineers from local national labs and companies to serve as judges, giving the students a valuable networking opportunity with future employers. I drew heavily on this experience during my service on the organizing committee for the 28th International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming, the foremost conference in my field and for which I now serve on the program committee.
Since beginning my postdoctoral appointment at UW, I am very passionate about a personal outreach project I started at the Pike Market Senior Center and Food Bank which serves homeless and low-income senior citizens in downtown Seattle. I teach a monthly ‘Senior Science’ series on participant suggested topics with a hands on activity and discussion. Many of the seniors were excluded from STEM in the past and are eager to learn now. It is incredibly rewarding and I’m thankful for the opportunity to work with them.