We went virtual in January, but that didn’t slow us down! A lot of time last month went into preparing for our Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Mid-Grant Technical Review (MGTR) coming up on February 26th.  All our team members have made a plan for their MGTR booth and designed materials such as presentations and posters.  We have some crafts planned, too!  We’ve also sent out save the date emails and flyers to all our community connections, including many school districts in the Greater Pittsburgh area.  We’re so excited to share our work with all our…continue reading →

This past year has been anything but uneventful for the Girls of Steel. As we head into the second half of our 12th season, many of our subteams have had major accomplishments. After a series of workshops over the summer, the FLL subteam is wrapped up their FLL Challenge season in December, but next up they will prepare for the FLL Explore season. Not only does our team reach out to younger generations of students interested in STEM, but our Outreach team is currently hosting a recurring webinar event called "Rosie Talks." These…continue reading →

  For the second year in a row we ran the Girls of Steel FLL Challenge program on Zoom, but this year our mentors were able to meet in person at the Girls of Steel Robotics Practice Field starting on October 23rd where they had access to LEGO Spike Prime robot kits and the 2021 FLL Challenge, Cargo Connect, field table. The mentors built four basic robots and then their students instructed them on building attachments for and coding the robots to complete missions.  The program ran for 12 weeks from September 25th…continue reading →

Happy New Year from the Girls of Steel BuzzBand team!  Not a moment of December went to waste, and we’ve made huge progress on both the business and technical aspects of the BuzzBand.  Here is the video update we shared at the InvenTeams Open House on December 9th. After BuzzBand’s press release last month, we have been featured in various news outlets. Two of our team members interviewed with Kidsburgh and KDKA, and our media team is busy sharing updates on our social medias.  Check out the segment from KDKA and articles from…continue reading →

After seeing such success with our Rosie Talks webinar series last year, we decided to bring it back for round 2 or season 2. If you aren’t familiar, Rosie Talks is a webinar series that aims to introduce and celebrate the experiences and accomplishments of girls and women involved in STEM from across the Pittsburgh area.  Each talk highlights a high school girl in STEM and a professional or higher education female in STEM. We kicked off “Rosie Talks Season 2” on December 19. Session 1 featured Amanda Hulver, an 11th grader from…continue reading →

  Throughout the last month, since the last time we posted, we have made much progress! On our robots, we have made many plans and measurements about what attachments we are going to add that will help us gain more points during the Freight Frenzy game. We have also begun the construction of our robots, one for each team (Hopper and Hypatia). So far, we have already finished our chassis (the bases) and added wheels! We’ve also learned a lot about the electronic and programming side of our robot. Take a look at…continue reading →

The Buzzband team is thrilled for the opportunity to work with Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams!  After receiving exciting news of Buzzband’s selection as one of the eight  2021-2022 Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam winners,  the team has been working on new assigned tasks. This November, we read and took notes on InvenTeam expectations found in the team handbook, allocated additional team leadership roles, and completed the training sessions in communications and finance.  Our new InvenTeam roles include: Administrative Leads: Janise & Aditri  Communications Leads: Justina & Tara Technical Leads: Janise & Aditri Financial Leads: Aditi & Grace Sustainability…continue reading →

On Thursday, November 4th, we had guest speaker Ms. Roseanne Silva talk at our Business All-Hands Meeting. She is a SVP and Business Chief Technology Officer at PNC Bank. She talked about her responsibility of delivering technology infrastructure and her involvement with cybersecurity and fraud prevention. She is a Carnegie Mellon University alumna, recipient of a 2019 Alumni Award, a community volunteer, and  also one of our amazing donors!      We enjoyed learning from her presentation about her role at PNC and her experiences that led her to where she is today.…continue reading →

Our First In-Person Meeting since March 2020! After 18 months of isolation on virtual meetings, on Tuesday October 19th Girls of Steel FRC reunited in person! Our first meeting was characterized by meeting new faces, reuniting with friends, and excitement about finally getting to work hands-on. We are lucky to be able to utilize our practice field space at Carnegie Mellon at 6555 Penn Ave. for technical meetings on Tuesdays. Our FIRST Tech Challenge teams started on October 21st using the practice field on Thursdays, while the FLL Mentors and BuzzBand team meet…continue reading →

  Hello! We are the 2021 FTC teams for Girls of Steel Robotics! We consist of 9 team members that make up 2 teams: Hopper and Hypatia, along with our mentors, Maggie and Sarah, and the FTC Liaison, Lauren, in FRC. Up until recently, we have been meeting online. We had our first in person meeting October 21st, where we took apart old robots and participated in some team building exercises. It was interesting to look at the small screws and gears of the robot and to see the important role these small…continue reading →

Girls of Steel has been 100% virtual since March 2020, but that hasn't stopped our outreach efforts. This summer, we even expanded our reach by offering our first ever hackathon for students in grades K-8.  We really miss meeting members of our community in person, but for now we are making excellent use of Zoom! Virtual Girls of Steel Expo We hosted our second annual virtual Expo on 8/8/2021 because of the circumstances with the COVID-19 pandemic. Originally designed as a variation of our annual GoS AI, Robotics, & STEM Symposium, this has…continue reading →

From August 13-14, 2021, Girls of Steel successfully launched GosHacks Jr.-- our first-ever hackathon-- reaching 39 registered participants, receiving 20+ official project submissions, hosting 7 student-led workshops and panels with 5 Girls of Steel members as mentors, and distributing $400+ in awards and prizes donated by GitHub and Girls of Steel.  Participants were divided into three divisions: Division I (K-2), Division II (3-5), and Division III (6-8).  A Grand Winner, First Runner-Up, and Second Runner-Up were selected from each division; additionally, the mentors selected a recipient of the Mentor’s Choice Award.  Girls of…continue reading →

What is NAC? The National Advocacy Conference, or NAC, is run by the Student Association for STEM Advocacy (SASA). The Girls of Steel have participated in the SASA NAC twice before, in June 2017 and June 2018.  The NAC has been in existence for eight years, and students have participated from thirty states. This year 25% of congress was involved in the conference and they met with students from 20 states at 150 meetings to hear their proposals. Before the big day of meetings on June 30th, teams listened to a five-hour debriefing…continue reading →

Girls of Steel’s 2021-2022 season was unique with its own set of challenges, but the pandemic helped the team learn to adapt to virtual settings and work efficiently. Despite these differences, we had another successful year with starting new projects, developing STEM and leadership skills, and ongoing communication/team events.  In the 2021 competition season, we competed in all three "FIRST at Home Challenges.” Girls of Steel is honored to receive the following FIRST awards this year:  The Regional Chairman's Award, "The Chairman’s Award is the most prestigious award at FIRST, it honors the…continue reading →

Data Anomalies Blog Post Since our last update, the Girls of Steel COVIDcast group has been hard at work monitoring and providing suggestions for the COVIDcast website. In fact, a new version of the website was recently released, and it has been made more compatible for users accessing the data from a wide range of devices. Delphi consulted experts in designing the website and we were able to witness the transformation of the initial website to the new interface. Not only did the website undergo a series of changes, but so did the…continue reading →

Girls of Steel has been holding all meetings and events virtually since March of 2020, but while we are virtual, we still wanted to reach out and help the community any way we could. Early this year, we contacted a special education teacher that we have met with before, Ms. Rachel Thiros, of the Baldwin-Whitehall School District. We asked her if there were any projects we could work on from home. She gave us a project for her student, Sam, a kindergartener who has acute flaccid myelitis. Sam has minimal use of his…continue reading →

It’s been a busy competition season!  Our chairman's team presented on March 14th and all three FIRST at Home challenge teams finished their projects and judging occurred for all teams the week of March 22nd.  Read our other competition season blog post here for a review of each at home challenge.  Each team did a fantastic job!  Here are a few words from each project lead about wrapping up competition season. Chairman's Team During competition season, a team of 5 students created our presentation for FIRST’s Chairman’s Award! They wrote and memorized a…continue reading →

In light of Women’s History month, it is important to highlight the amazing contributions of many women to society. As an all girl’s robotics team, Girls of Steel works to promote the contributions of women in STEM in order to inspire young people to pursue their passions in STEM. We used to do this through social media, events, and outreach, but the COVID-19 pandemic of the past year has created complications and caused us to rethink how we spread our message.  Due to the pandemic, we are unable to do any in-person outreach…continue reading →

Competition season for Girls of Steel kicked off on January 9th!  This year, FRC teams have a choice of three different virtual challenges, INFINITE RECHARGE at Home, Game Design Challenge, and the FIRST Innovation Challenge.  The INFINITE RECHARGE at Home challenge engages teams in two ways: teams can compete for judged awards using their 2020/2021 robot and compete in a Skills Competition, a series of challenges for teams who have access to their robot.   In the Game Design Challenge, teams design a FIRST Robotics Competition game and present it to judges for the opportunity…continue reading →

At the All Hands Meeting on January 12th, Girls of Steel was fortunate to have Helen Greiner as a guest speaker! Ms. Greiner grew up in London, but moved to the United States as a young girl and later attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  She was inspired to get involved in robotics by the fun other students had with robots in MITs 270 course and earlier by R2D2’s agenda and character.  She even had Dr. Woodie Flowers as one of her professors!  After graduation, Ms. Greiner worked on many different robots,…continue reading →

When the whole world was shutting down in March, Delphi was hard at work developing COVIDcast, a map to track and record COVID-19 data. Girls of Steel joined the effort in May, just as the platform was being launched. This was not Delphi’s first rodeo. They had been reporting data for influenza since 2013 on their website. Indicators on the map range from COVID-related doctor visits to the number of positive cases for the COVID antigen test. Since joining COVIDcast, GoS members have worked on projects that include fixing the visibility of the…continue reading →

Welcome to the Girls of Steel FTC teams' updates about the rest of our season. In case you missed it, here's our first blog. Unfortunately we were unable to do any hands on work with robots during the 12 weeks of preseason, but we still had a great time.  We divided into 3 teams and learned while collaborating on Zoom and Discord. Each week we attended all hands meetings with the FRC team and presented slides with summary of our accomplishments from the prior week and plans for that meeting. It was a…continue reading →

On December 6, 2020, the Girls of Steel hosted our first session of “Rosie Talks”, a webinar series that aims to introduce and celebrate the experiences and accomplishments of girls and women involved in STEM from across the Pittsburgh area.  This session, our speakers were Anna Nesbitt, Girls of Steel member and a senior at the Winchester Thurston School, and Elizabeth Bianchini, a robotics PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania; we had approximately 40 registrants.  Anna has founded three award-winning elementary school robotics teams in an effort to create a STEM pipeline…continue reading →

While this has been an unprecedented year for everyone, the Girls of Steel lived up to their reputation of representing Rosie the Riveter---exceeding expectations and by delivering quality programs to our community. Below is a recap of some of the highlights from 2020. Details and more photos are available in the blog posts linked below. Enjoy!  It's January 2020 and everything is on track with the FIRST organization's game reveal  at kickoff on January 4th and the Girls of Steel built a 120-lb. robot, Europa, for the Infinite Recharge competition season. In February…continue reading →

The business and technical subteams had their final week of preseason the week of December 14th.  Despite the different circumstances this year, each subteam achieved many of their goals.  Here is a summary from every subteam on what they accomplished this preseason.  In case you missed it, here's our first preseason blog post. Business Subteams After having restructured the business side of the team this summer, we were eager to test out the changes. We were pleased to confirm that the new system distributed tasks better and improved communication. All of the new…continue reading →