STEAM Week is back for its 19th year at Los Altos High School. From next Monday, October 2nd, to Wednesday, October 4th, STEAM Week will feature professionals from STEAM fields to discuss their experiences and work. It also features four students from LAHS’ Advanced Scientific Investigation (ASI) class. During Wednesday ACT, there will be a workshop hosted by LinkedIn on how to create a better profile.

The event is organized by senior Kaitlyn Don, LAHS parents and teachers and aims to make STEAM subjects more accessible to students. Presentations from featured speakers will be hosted at the Eagle Theater, and teachers will be able to bring their classes during their periods. Students can also attend during their free periods.

“One of our goals is to present careers, including more out-of-the-box ones, for students to explore,” Kaitlyn said. “We introduce students to STEAM professions and show them how they can combine their interests in the real world.”

This STEAM week is also emphasizing the inclusion of the “A,” art. Many other schools leave this out, opting only for traditional STEM careers, but LAHS’ STEAM Week aims to highlight a more diverse range of fields to support more students’ interests.

“This year, we’re having a culinary chef come in to promote perhaps less represented careers and aspects of STEAM,” Kaitlyn said.

“Many people have the old school view of art as ‘It’s just painting. It’s just drawing,’” said STEAM Week teacher liaison teacher Stephen Hine. “What people don’t really understand is the aspect of design in tech, engineering and product design.”

“It’s a cool experience,” Hine continued. “To be like, ‘I didn’t know that field existed,’ or, ‘I could see myself doing that.’”

Here’s a rundown of STEAM Week’s schedule:

Monday:

• Period 1:
  • Dr. Gregory V. Wadden: Can you be passionate about your career — so that you can enjoy going to work?
• Period 2:
  • Frans Sijstermans: How AI enables self-driving cars
• Period 3:
  • John Edmark: Surprising Structures and Baffling Behaviors: Kinetic Sculptures Grounded in Geometry
• Period 4:
  • Nabeel Mahmood, Maricel Cerruti, Howard Berry and Marcus McMillin: Bridging the Digital Divide: An intro to Data Centers (Panel)
• Period 5:
  • Ya Xu: AI & You: Navigating Tomorrow’s AI-Led World
• Period 6:
  • Jeremiah Garrido: Forensic Science: From the Crime Scene to the Crime Lab
• Period 7:
  • Audrey Tsai and Bridget Liu: Lipid Metabolism and Parkinson’s
  • Carter Capetz: Polymers to Perovskites: The Possibilities of High School Research
  • Matthew Kim: Making The Future Safer: Artificial Intelligence and Subtle Biases

Tuesday:

• Period 1:
  • Kunjan Shah: Architecture: Thinking Outside the Left Brain Box
  • Myriam Curet: What if you need surgery? A case study
• Period 3:
  • Kanaka Pattabiraman: All who wander are not lost
  • Christy Wolf: The Science Behind Delicious
  • Pauline Bennett: You Are First of All Required to Thrive
• Period 5:
  • Prabhat Ram: AI History / ChatGPT
  • Tyler Feld: The “Plants and People” People: Working as a community to restore local ecosystems
• Period 7:
  • Krystle Hickman: The A, Bee, Cs of Native Bees
  • Erica Lockheimer: Be your authentic self

Wednesday:

• Period 2:
  • Jennifer Sumant: The Science and Art of Clinical Medicine
  • Smita Shankar: The Impossible Path- My journey to sustainable food production using Biotechnology
• ACT: LinkedIn Workshop
• Period 4:
  • Veronica Cedillos: Building Disaster Resilience: Making our World Safer through Structural Engineering
  • Karl Schaffer and Laurel Shastri: Where Patterns Collide: Dance and Mathematics
• Period 6:
  • Tad Hogg: The Alien Worlds of Molecular Machines and Micro Robots
  • Bill Halpin: Technology, Engineering, Math

To learn more about STEAM Week, visit their website: https://www.lahssteamweek.com/