Mass Academy juniors presented their STEM project research at December STEM Fair
“There’s a glue dot shortage!” exclaimed Anne Tie, a junior at Mass Academy. She, alongside her 48 junior classmates, scrambled to put the final touches on her poster for the upcoming STEM Fair. On December 13, 2022, all Mass Academy juniors presented their independent research projects at the school-wide science fair.
A few months before, all Mass Academy juniors were given the opportunity to choose an engineering problem or scientific research question to study throughout the course of the year. This December Fair would act as a mock fair that mimicked the official STEM fair the students would be participating in later in the spring. Each student was responsible for creating a poster that displayed the progress they had made on their projects so far and the results they had obtained.
The weeks leading up to the fair were crucial for students, as they devoted countless hours in and out of school practicing their presentations. They were provided with several opportunities to receive feedback from their peers and teachers, and given lessons on the do’s and don’ts of presenting.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to conduct my own research, nevertheless present it in a setting like this, so I was definitely nervous before the fair,” said junior Venkatraman Varatharajan, whose project is titled Evaluating the Feasibility of an Ensemble Gray Box AI From a Game Theory Perspective.
Alumni and Mass Academy seniors served as judges at the fair, and were told to score each participant based on a rubric. During the event, each student had the opportunity to present their research to 4-5 different judges.
“I was surprised to see the number of people that came to look at our posters,” said junior Shreya Venkayala, who is researching The Effects of Amentoflavone on Amyloid-beta 42 Toxicity in C. elegans models of Alzheimer’s Disease.
There was a huge turn out, and the event was very successful. The overall student consensus was that the fair was a valuable experience, and although it seemed stressful at times, it was definitely worthwhile.
“It was hard work that paid off in the end,” said junior Charles Tang, whose goal is to develop a semi-trailer truck right-hook turn blindspot alert system for detecting vulnerable road users using transfer learning.
As February 16th approaches, students are busy preparing for their next STEM fair. Stay tuned to see how that goes!
Naga Vikram
Junior Staff Writer
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