Viterbi Summer Institute (VSI):
Summer 2019: We hosted two high school students, Benjamin Bedregal Barboza and Cameron J. Cole, over the summer of 2019 through the Viterbi Summer Institute. They worked with Nick to model the surface behavior of single atom catalysts!
Young Researchers Program (YRP):
Summer 2021: We hosted April Ramos, a high school student from Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School over the summer of 2021 through the Young Researchers Program. April worked with Kareesa on college app preparation and did research into the mechanisms of carboxylation!
Summer 2019: We hosted Samantha Gomez, a high school student from Bravo Medical Magnet High School over the summer of 2019 through the Young Researchers Program. She worked with Kareesa to model the kinetics and excitation energies of terphenyl compounds. Her hard work earned her a spot on the manuscript developed based on this on-going research!
Summer High School Intensive in Next-Generation Engineering (SHINE):
Summer 2022: Selin and Nick are hosting two high school students through SHINE. These students will aid in the research of single atom catalysts.
Summer 2018: We were thrilled to host a high school student, Roushan, over the summer of 2018 through the Viterbi SHINE program. She worked closely with Zhenzhuo on using data science methods to predict chemical behavior. Shout out to Katie Mills for making this happen!
Summer 2018: Shaama also spent some time with the SHINE students talking about chemical engineering and the future of computational research. Check it out here (shout out to Megan for covering the event!)
A chapter of Women in Chemical Engineering was founded in the Spring of 2019 by a group of PhD students under the guidance of Dr. Shaama Sharada. The organization hosts events for graduate and undergraduate students in the Mork Family Department to help foster personal and professional relationships across the department. In addition to Dr. Sharada serving as the faculty advisor, Kareesa served as the outreach coordinator for WChE and planned events for off-campus education outreach events in 2019-20 and is serving as the Vice President for Web Resource Management in 2020-21.
Dr. Sharada is partnering with the Environmental Sciences class at Hawthorne Math and Science Academy. For several months, Dr. Sharada and Kareesa teamed up with Meredith from HMSA to write a lesson plan for environmental science classes that utilizes IQMol to teach high school students the underlying chemical processes that underlie global warming. On Oct 24th, 2020, they presented a webinar to a group of high school teachers from across the state of California. The webinar and lesson plan they developed can be found on the WChE website here!
On Jan 31st, 2020, she got together with the class in their computer lab and talked about chemical engineers and their role in sustainability. Students also gained first-hand experience with modeling research! They built greenhouse gas molecules – CO2 and CH4 – with IQMol, an open-source software used by computational scientists around the world to build molecular models for their research. HMSA has made the software available on school computers for all students, to help them construct and visualize molecules and chemical bonds. The IQMol demo Shaama created can be found here: Build-a-Molecule
Spring 2022: Kareesa coordinated a booth at the USC SCout Science Fair on behalf of QUEST. Elementary school students attended the science fair and did small activities at booths hosted by student orgs. QUEST's activity was "Taste the Rainbow" and taught kids how natural selection works through an example with skittles!
2020-2021: Andres Rodriguez-Katakura has volunteered with USC Science Outreach Program. His ability to speak Spanish is particularly helpful for students who are less proficient in English! Through this program Andres teaches introductory science lectures and experiments to 2nd and 3rd grade students in the south LA area.
Mar 2022: Kareesa helped plan and host the regional oSTEM conference. During the conference, Kareesa hosted a panel, a community building event, and helped plan a DnD fundraiser that raised over 800 dollars for the LA LGBT Center!
Oct 2022: Kareesa ran a Trivia Fundraiser on behalf of QUEST and raised approximately 200 dollars for the LA LGBT Center
April 2019: Kareesa volunteered as a judge for the AIChE ChemE car competition at the regional conference
In March of 2018, Zhenzhuo presented our work at the Research Pairing Mixer hosted by USC Society for Advancing Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Chapter.