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About
My name is Sarah, and I'm a junior in high school in the Los Angeles area. Ask any of my friends, and you'll probably hear that I'm a little bit of STEM nerd. That's not wrong. I love fun, weird, complicated math problems and building cool robots to do super specific tasks. I can spend hours working on a mechanism or debugging code.
So... why did I start LaunchBot?
I started LaunchBot because I trace all of my STEM interests and work back to one specific moment in the fifth grade. My class had just been introduced to robotics, and we were allowed to use tablets and small robots to experience them firsthand. I was fascinated. From then onwards, I jumped into robotics, and then computer science, because of how fun and exciting my first interaction with robots was. The access to those robots and that teacher inspired me to increase my STEM education. From then onwards, I jumped into robotics and computer science due to how exciting my first interaction was.
My goal is to give as many children as possible the opportunity to experience the spark I had that day in fifth grade. I want every kid to be able to see how exciting and fun robotics is, and in addition, have the opportunity to learn a little coding. LaunchBot is an organization focused on empowering students to see the power of STEM through fun and hands-on lessons.
I want to make sure that students outside of LA also get this opportunity, so I’m also focused on making LaunchBot a nationwide initiative by recruiting other high school students to teach the curriculum in their communities.
If you're curious about more of my STEM experience...
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I’ve been involved in competitive robotics for the past five years, captaining one team my freshman year and winning a high award at the World Championship with my team this past year.
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Along with my teammates, I’ve been a part of community outreach focused on bringing STEM to underserved youth communities through weekly lessons at a community center, coaching a female Lego robotics team at our local boys and girls club, and highlighting robotics at local elementary schools.
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Through robotics, I’ve learned fundamental engineering, CAD, iteration, and design process skills.
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I co-run FemSTEM, a club at my high school focused on engaging female students in STEM topics and research. We also do research projects each year, from the development of chicken embryos to the use of mycelium as an environmentally-friendly alternative to wood.
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I spent the summers before my freshman and sophomore years of high school learning more about biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering at summer programs at Sarah Lawrence college and Oxford University. I spent this summer working as an AI Intern at Cogo Labs.
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I have taken two introductory programming classes and AP Computer Science A at my school and also have some experience in Python. I know some JavaScript, CSS, TypeScript, HTML, and React. I have also built my own artificial neural net using TensorFlow and Python, spent some time learning about AI/Deep Learning, and am currently working on building a study application targeted for AP exams with one of my co-interns.
