Debbie Mickle

Saint Gertrude High School’s all-girl robotics team has built a robot that walks, talks, hands out business cards and collapses easily into a suitcase. “Ellie” is the name of SGHS’ fabulous female robot that will premiere at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 6-9 and then travel between Germany, France and the US. Watch this Science Matters Video to learn more about how these young women accepted a challenge to build a “Girlbot” and all they have learned along the way.

Why is Engineering a Hot Job? Listen to 3 students from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Engineering to find out. During the recent VCU Capstone (Senior) Design Expo hundreds of engineering students solved problems and developed new products that will make a difference. Learn why these three students went into Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Why is Engineering a Hot Job? In the words of recent graduate Eric Henderson, You get to work with friends in teams, you get to make a lot of cool objects and toys, and you get to make a lot of money." Check out the resources below and see if Engineering is the career path for you.

Recently, 150 middle school girls from across Central Virginia participated in a mini hackathon designed by Capital One and RichTech. These young women had the opportunity to explore technology by working with mentors and trying their hand at coding and app development. Techsters is an annual program and partnership between Capital One and RichTech and is part of Capital One's five-year, $150 million Future Edge initiative, which is designed to help empower more Americans to succeed in an ever-changing digitally-driven economy.

What do you call the intersection of Engineering - Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, Computer Science - and Biology? Biomechanical Engineering. This hot STEM career combines these important fields of science and technology to create products and treatments to improve the quality of our lives. Science Matters visited Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Engineering recently to learn about the research and development of a cutting-edge device, a Nano-Tattoo, being developed by a team of students led by Dr. Woon-Hong Yeo Assistant Professor in VCU's Department of Mechanical Nuclear Engineering and the "Bio-interfaced NanoEngineering Lab. The VCU team is collaborating with several other departments in VCU's School of Engineering as well as teams located at other universities across the U.S. to develop this new technology.

What do you get when you bring together middle school students and mentors, send them on outdoor adventures and explorations of future careers and then challenge them to build something? You get an incredibly fun summer that includes learning while building important career readiness skills.

What do you think of when you think of a factory? Some loud, dirty place where thousands of workers assemble the same parts over and over for 8 hours a day? Well guess what? We're not talking about your Grandfather’s factory anymore! Thanks to Advanced Manufacturing – the making of products using cutting edge technology- factories in Virginia and all over the US are undergoing some exciting changes.

Worms. Trojan Horses. Hackers and Clouds. What comes to mind when you hear these words? I’m not talking about what’s happening in the movies, but what’s happening in cyberspace- that area that connects all of us and our computers to the internet and each other.

This is the first of 2 stories featuring Nanotechnology where we will explore how working small and thinking big can launch new careers. Learn more about the rapidly emerging field of Nanotechnology at VCU in this Science Matters video. Next, we will shadow two High School teachers, Nano Fellows at the MathScience Innovation Center, who are using Nanotechnology to engage and better prepare students for the 21st century workforce.