M.A.Bessa
Outreach initiatives
Bridging Insularity Trough STEM (BITS)
The BITS outreach project was an incredible experience. Read about it here. The most rewarding experience happened at Escola da Fonte da Rocha, Madeira Island, when I asked if the students had any question and a fourth grader raised her hand to say:
— "Sir, can I say something that is not a question?"
— "Yes, of course!"
— "I just want to say thank you for coming here to talk about Science."
Priceless.
Interview with TalkingData
TalkingData contacted me for an interview as part of their initiative to visit researchers in the USA that are exploring the use of machine learning for advancing different scientific and engineering disciplines. On June 11, 2017 we talked about how data science is reshaping the design and discovery of new materials and structures.
Tour and Lab visits
Undergraduate students from different schools visit four Caltech labs on May 23, 2017. Nat Prunet shows Professor Meyerowitz' lab and talks about some of the most recent discoveries in the plant genome, Chanpreet Singh shows Professor Prober's lab with the sleeping fish, Abby Crites showed the coolest experiments in Cosmology, and I got to show Professor Pellegrino's space structures lab!
Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2017
Several Caltech postdoctoral scholars participated as Grand Award Judges at the INTEL ISEF 2017 (May 16 & 17, 2017). Being a part of this event was an absolutely incredible experience. We talked with some of the most talented high school students in the World... Truly humbling.
Lecture at the Chicago Math and Science Academy (CMSA)
On March 14, 2016 me and Shiva Ashari went to the CMSA to give a lecture entitled "Why should you become Engineers?". We discussed general engineering applications and current research topics, the great personal and financial rewards of being an engineer, as well as the importance of minorities for the scientific endeavor. If you are different, you think differently, and you have higher chances of being original!
Chicago Public Schools Annual Science and Math fair
Judging some great projects at the Chicago Public Schools Annual Science and Math fair (January 15, 2016). In the picture with Nicholas and Djuan. Keep up the nice work guys!
Information session at the Evanston Township High School (ETHS)
The ETHS held an information session about careers in STEM on December 2, 2015. Students and parents spent the evening talking with several doctoral students from different Universities and hearing about the many opportunities these institutions offer for research and education. At the end of a really pleasant evening there was pizza for the last ones standing!
STEM shadow day
Victor, a high school student from the Evanston Township High School (ETHS) spent a day (November 11, 2015) with different members of the student chapter of the US Association for Computational Mechanics at Northwestern University. Victor was interested in computer science and hardware, so he had a chance to see the Liu-Belytschko computer cluster and learned how to use it to run finite element simulations for a cell mechanics problem. Now he knows what Computational Mechanics is all about: discovering new ways to model the world we live in, making predictions with powerful computers, and then validating models with experiments!