UC Berkeley Electrical Engineering Graduate Student Association (EEGSA) Outreach Program

After my time at RIT and upon coming to UC Berkeley, given my prior experience with science and engineering outreach, I decided to take it upon myself to develop my own outreach program.  Thankfully, I was more or less given free reign within EEGSA to do this in a way that represents my vision.  I remember being very curious as a middle/high school student about technology, wanting to know how things worked and anticipating the time when I would learn enough math and science to become the very “expert” in technical fields that I looked up to as a kid.  This program is an effort to satiate or inspire that curiosity in young students, by teaching them about things which others may deem “too complex” and then use that newfound knowledge to show them how rich science and engineering actually are.

The way this program is structured is that, each semester, volunteer graduate level EE students develop a presentation module (~40-50 minutes long) on a topic of science and technology that is of interest to them.  This could either be related to their own research or to something else that they think is “cool.”  We meet weekly to develop and refine our material and, when the modules are complete, we go and present to local science classes.  Our definition of “completeness” is not just a rigorous explanation of the technology in question, but also communicated in a way that can readily relate to young science students.  Typically, this involves explaining applications in systems like iPods, cell phones, and video games, although of course we try to maintain some variety.  As of this writing, we have made multiple trips to Mr. Matt McHugh’s senior level high school physics class at Berkeley High School (pictures below). 

We have so far presented on the following topics:

Transistor history and technology

Memory technology

Wireless communication

Physics of sound/audio compression

Micromechanical resonators

Optoelectronic tweezers

Display history and technology

Robotics

Lasers

Computational structure

We are currently developing or plan to develop presentations on the following topics:

Microscale sensors and actuators

Alternative Energy

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Astrophysics/Astronomy