Students Embrace STEM Sisterhood

Decades of academic research suggests that girls work better together. The success of these Mayfield STEM teams is our proof.

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Alum mentor helps students shift their applied math skills into top gear

Elizabeth Dimen ’16 returned to 500 Bellefontaine (virtually!) to mentor M3 team members Frances Burton ’21, Cameron Gomez ’20, Maggie Kiechler ’20, Sophia Labrador ’21, Ysabelle Magat ’21, Amanda Mar ’20, Megan Moffat ’20, Solunna Nwankwo ’20, Fiona Pan ’20, Alex Thomson ’20, Halle Villalobos ’20 and Yalda Zadeh ’20.

This was a banner year for Mayfield in the annual MathWorks Math Modeling (M3) Challenge, an advanced math problem-solving competition that attracts more than 3,500 of the country’s top STEM students. For the first time, both Mayfield teams were among the top 15% to advance to the second round of judging. The new variable in this year’s equation? Online mentoring from alumna Elizabeth Dimen ’16, an applied math and economics major at Brown University, who competed on Mayfield’s inaugural M3 team in 2016.

Last fall, Mayfield’s two teams (who were way ahead of the curve on remote learning, as it turned out) sat down with Elizabeth over several extended video sessions on statistics, probability and math notation. Team leader Fiona Pan ’20 said that Elizabeth’s guidance was a game changer for the students. “We learned, how do we think of a problem— like top-down, bottom-up? Do we think of it more economically?” said Fiona, a second-time M3 competitor. “She really helped us find a concrete approach.” Elizabeth, who credits the M3 competition with helping guide her to her course of study at Brown, was happy to help. “It’s really rewarding for me to pass on what I have learned,” she said.

The recent college grad was particularly impressed by the natural collaboration she saw among the Mayfield students: ”I don’t think you could get that at another school where you just pull out five students and they already are able to communicate well,” she said. “I always felt like everybody was bringing something to the table in their own way.”

I always felt like everybody was bringing something to the table in their own way.

— ELIZABETH DIMEN ’16

The M3 competition is intense. Teams are tasked with tackling a realworld problem that’s revealed only on the morning of the competition. This year, it was converting the nation’s 1.7 million big rigs from diesel to electric power. Students then collaborate over a marathon 14-hour session to produce a 20-page paper that outlines a solution. The pressure-cooker environment is designed to mimic the complex and high-stakes situations that professional mathematicians often face.

This advanced set of problem solving skills—which combines math knowledge, critical thinking, research, design, writing and, above all, teamwork—“has never been more relevant to the world around us than at this moment,” said Math Department Chair Melissa Tighe.

“Our current global [COVID-19] crisis highlights the importance of having professionals skilled in being able to make timely recommendations, based on sound data and analysis, in a rapidly changing environment.”

Robotics students get down to nuts and bolts with JPL engineers

Robotics team members presented their prototypes to a panel of JPL engineers.

A group of STEM enthusiasts gathered in a Mayfield science lab to discuss progress on an ongoing team project. Some were teenage girls getting ready for their first robotics competition of the year. Others were veteran aerospace, mechanical and software engineers who have sent robots to space. But that night, they were peers discussing drivetrains, cascading lifts and claws—engineer to engineer.

Now in its third year at Mayfield, the Girl Scouts-sponsored robotics lab in the Hayden Turner Center is home to two FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams, the Javabots and the Rock N’ Roll Robots.

In the fall of 2019, these two groups of young engineers, made up of Mayfield students and girls from other local area schools, were determined to make it to the annual FTC World Championships. So when they had the chance to present their preliminary robot designs to a room of JPL engineers, including many Mars Rover alums and Mars 2020 Rover team members, they weren’t looking for a pat on the back. They were there for nittygritty mechanical shop talk with some of the nation’s preeminent engineers.

They’d been working on their preliminary robot designs since August and wanted expert input on things like wheel compliance (aka squishiness), deployment mechanisms and stress analysis. It all really came down to one question, said Javabots member Agnese Sanavio ’20: “How can I make this robot better—faster, stronger, lighter?”

So, after identifying their favorite Girl Scout cookies (frozen Thin Mints, anyone?) the (mostly female) review panel got down to business. First, the students explained the setup for this year’s FTC Challenge, called “Skystone,” which tasked teams with engineering a robot that can quickly and efficiently collect giant plastic “stones” and build them into stacks. Both Mayfield-based teams told the JPL reviewers that they wanted their robots to be “very robust and structurally sound,” while minimizing size, weight and failure potential.

Students then presented early versions of their designs and the JPL engineers peppered them with detailed questions about their robot’s structural integrity and reliability. The feedback from the JPL engineers was a huge boon, Agnese said, because “they helped us identify weaknesses in our mechanisms we had not considered before and ways we could work to fix these problems.”

The best part? Students got “a great glimpse into what engineers do on a day-to-day basis,” Agnese said. As it turns out, it’s pretty close to what these students do in their Mayfield robotics lab—collaborate, iterate and get creative with problem-solving, all while mastering new technical skills and meeting deadlines.

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Mayfield-based Javabots praised as a “model” robotics team

The Javabots were recognized as a “model” FIRST Tech Challenge team.

Congratulations to our two Mayfield-based Girl Scouts robotics teams, the Javabots and the Rock N’ Roll Robots, who both scored big at the final league tournament of this year’s truncated FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics season. The Javabots brought home the Inspire Award for being “a model FIRST team,” the highest honor in FTC competitions, and were also runners up for the Innovate Award, which recognizes ingenuity, creativity and inventiveness. The Rock N’ Roll Robots finished the meet in third place and took runner-up honors for the Motivate Award for team building, spirit and enthusiasm. Congratulations to Javabots members Emma Franco ’22, Agnese Sanavio ’20, Kayla Tan ’22 and Grace Vipipan ’21, and Rock N’ Roll Robots members Ashley Dalisay ’22, Rebecca Lara ’21 and Caroline Squire ’23.

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STEM students 3D print physician-approved PPE for health care heroes

Caroline Squire ’23 and other STEM students and alums generated medical-grade face masks on their 3D printers.

Mayfield students and alums harnessed their engineering know-how to produce hundreds of face masks and shields for health care heroes on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis. Robotics team member Caroline Squire ’23 was inspired by Mayfield’s “Actions Not Words” motto to join the grassroots 3D printing project. “At Mayfield, we are taught to not say you are going to do something, but to just go and do it,” Caroline said.

With the help of USC-bound senior Cameron Gomez ’20 (pictured on page 18), alums Elizabeth Nail ’18, Annie Tighe ’19 and Katherine Tighe ’16 (see page 65), and several of Caroline’s Girl Scouts robotics teammates, the Mayfield STEM community rallied to deliver much-needed protective gear to workers at Keck Medicine of USC.