Giving high school students hands-on STEM experiences

Roaming outdoors with homemade multispectral cameras, high school students are getting a hands-on look at engineering remote sensing.

Tomoko Matsuo,an associate professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, is leading a special summer program giving 9th-12th graders a unique STEM experience.

"They're going through a whole arc: building an instrument, a field campaign, data collection," Matsuo said. "It's great to be with these aspiring young students. They're so curious."

The module was developed as part of Matsuo's National Science Foundation CAREER Award grant.This year it is offered as part of a CU Science Discovery Camp, an educational outreach program designed to connect public audiences with the STEM research happening at CU Boulder. Roughly two dozen teens are participating in the activity as part of a weeklong program exploring different aspects of science and engineering.

Matsuo's day-to-day research is in remote sensing, the science of investigating aspects of the earth and space environment from a distance, typically using instruments aboard aircraft or satellites. It often involves monitoring conditions not visible to the naked eye. The teens in the camp are getting a basic primer with more easily accessible technology - digital cameras.

But these are not off-the-shelf Nikons. The project involves assembling do-it-yourself cameras consisting of an ultra-tiny Raspberry Pi Linux computer, batteries, a camera lens, and special multi-spectral filters to see beyond visible light into the UV and infrared spectrum.

While humans cannot perceive such light under ordinary circumstances, some animals and insects can. The camera makes it possible to view how the world appears through those eyes.

Assisting with the lesson was recent PhD graduate John Marino (ElEngr MS'16, AeroEngr PhD'24), who saw the project as an opportunity to build excitement for science and engineering.

"I hope one of the kids comes away learning something they didn't know and wanting to know more. It's nice to be able to generate programs like this for kids," Marino said.

The camera originated as a personal side project of Marino's. After demonstrating the technology to Matsuo and the ability to see things in UV and infrared, they adapted it into an educational module.

"I just wanted to see if I could build a multi-spectral camera for fun, but Tomoko saw the potential as an enrichment activity," Marino said.

The experience included more than just assembling and using the camera. Kawther Rouabhi, a third-year aerospace PhD student led the teens step by step through one of her favorite activities: programming.

"They're building the cameras, learning a little bit about their inner workings, and getting hands-on experience with the Linux command line and Python. Everything that makes it work. My first experience with programming was when I was about their age, and I really like solving problems this way," Rouabhi said.

As a student in Matsuo's lab, Rouabhi spends much of her time analyzing remote sensing data with machine learning, but she is thrilled to share her knowledge with teens.

"These types of programs were very important for me to get excited about STEM as a young person," she said. "I want to make things like this more accessible. It's been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. Working with teens, they're all super motivated and excited. It's really fun."

CU Boulder's Science Discovery Camps are an annual series of weeklong summer programs open to K-12 students.Find out more at the Science Discovery website.

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