Trinity Student Selected For Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day

On Friday February 18, 2022, Maddie McBride, an 8th grade student at Trinity Christian School in Shorewood, IL. joined by 148 other 8th grade girls from all over Illinois, participated in Argonne National Laboratory’s “Introduce a Girl to Engineering” Day. This all-day event was Argonne’s 20th anniversary of bringing the best in the scientific field together to teach and inspire young girls in the field of Engineering.

Special guest speakers included Dr. Geraldine Richmond, The Under Secretary for Science and Innovation from The United States Department of Energy, and Congressman Bill Foster from the United States Congress. The Under Secretary serves as the Secretary of Energy's Science and Technology advisor, monitors the Department of Energy's research and development programs, and advises the secretary on any gaps or duplications in them. Also, the Under Secretary advises the secretary on the management and the state of the national laboratories overseen by the department. Under Secretary Dr. Richmond and Congressman Foster both spoke of their experiences in science and encouraged the girls to continue cultivating their curiosity in the pursuit of a career in Engineering.

McBride joined in on presentations and experiments from the best and the brightest in their fields from scientists at Argonne National Laboratory. Ed Berry spoke about the Oleo Sponge: technology developed for recovering oil and other petroleum products from water and Trevor Crain spoke about the EcoCAR Mobility Challenge: the latest U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition (AVTC) series. Scientists performed experiments with liquid nitrogen and analyzed the results, while the girls were given the chance to ask questions. McBride asked, “If the liquid nitrogen can power the lamp, can’t it power generators, our homes and stuff like that?” Scientist Elina Kasman replied, “It doesn’t actually power it, but reduces the temperature making the wires less resistant and a more efficient circuit.” The demonstrators read the question aloud and commented that, “inventing a room temperature super conductor would guarantee a Nobel Prize Award!”

Students were given an opportunity to ask questions during a STEAM Q &A Panel session with scientists from Argonne including Rosemarie Wilton- Molecular Biologist, Lisa C. Childers – Technical Development Lead, Carrie Siu – Postdoctoral Appointee, Sonya Soroko – Designer, Marieme Ngom- Postdoctoral Appointee.

In the afternoon, students met in small groups with an assigned Argonne mentor. McBride’s mentor, Sanja Tepavcevic lead students, Angelina McCracken, Bridget McVey, Violet Marx, and Ruby Marx in discussion. McBride asked if there were opportunities to do internships in high school at Argonne and how students can go about making that happen. Tepavcevic answered, “Yes! There are definitely opportunities for internships here at Argonne -before Covid, I was working with a high school girl for 3 months and she is writing a research paper with me. The process needs to be started a year ahead of time, so start now!”

Later, McBride asked, “Three members of my immediate family are Hearing Impaired, does Argonne do research that would help the Deaf and Hard of Hearing population?” Tepavcevic said that “Argonne recently partnered with the University of Illinois that was researching the role of Nanobiology and collaborated with scientists from all over the world in every scientific field.”

Other activities included creating an Argonne Time Capsule and traversing a Cybersecurity Escape Room. The girls were challenged to identify a phishing email, decode a Caesar Cipher with their Cryptography skills, crack an embedded image using Steganography and utilize social engineering to gain access to the hacker’s accounts. McBride exclaimed, “I just learned about this at my school in an afterschool workshop over Cybersecurity!”

Trinity Christian School’s Director of Technology and Curriculum, Virginia Hayward said, regarding this special opportunity, “What an exceptional day of learning and collaboration Argonne Lab has put together to ignite passion and increase confidence in our young engineers. We are very proud of Maddie for taking the initiative to expand her learning in a field that interests her. We are excited to see how this event will impact the career course of our future leaders.”