LANL wants students’ glimpse of lab’s future

What kind of issues will scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory be addressing 70 years from now?

That’s a question lab officials are posing to sixth- through 12th-grade students in northern New Mexico in an online contest being held in conjunction with LANL’s 70th anniversary.

The Los Alamos STEM Challenge asks students to envision the next 70 years of discovery and create a poster, video, written essay or an idea for an application software that communicates what they foresee.

“The challenge aims to motivate student interest in STEM learning by demonstrating their teaming, researching, writing, designing and editing skills while learning about the laboratory,” said Janelle Vigil-Maestas of LANL’s Community Programs Office. “We’re tasking them to study the past and the current work being done at the lab. By doing that, they become more familiar with the kind of work that goes on at the lab.”

Born to develop an atomic bomb and still primarily known for the work it does with nuclear weapons, LANL’s scope has broadened over the years to include research in bioscience, chemistry, energy production, and computer modeling.

“There are all kinds of things that people don’t normally think about; it’s not all technical,” Vigil-Maestas said. “We even have a large accounting division that handles procurement reconciliations, and we think it’s important for them to know about these other opportunities.”

The contest is open to students residing in seven counties: Bernalillo, Mora, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Santa Fe, San Miguel and Taos.

A notice was sent out earlier this month to teachers, principals, superintendents and LANL’s educational partners announcing the call for entries. Students can work in teams of up to six people or individually, though a teacher or home-school parent must register the student.

Registration must be completed on the contest’s website, www.lanlstemchallenge.com, by Saturday. Contestants have until April 30 to submit their entries. Winners will be selected by a panel of contest committee members, LANL post-doctorals and employees and announced May 13.

“The other cool part of it is they have an opportunity to win not only for their classroom, but they can win a Kindle Fire or an iPad mini,” Vigil-Maestas said.

Winners will be declared in each of the four categories — poster, video, app and essay — and a “Best of Show” winner will be named in both middle and high school divisions. In addition, up to $300 will be awarded in each category that can be used for school math and science classes.

“What we’re trying to encourage is for teachers to register each team so that they have oversight and guidance for each team,” Vigil-Maestas said.

The contest is intended to align with the Common Core standards for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).

“This STEM Challenge addresses a core idea from the Next Generation Science standards, which states that students must understand the links among Engineering, Technology, Science and Society,” according to the contest website. “This challenge inspires students to research exciting past and present projects at the Lab and discover how LANL research addresses real world challenges. Students then reflect on global and local challenges facing their community and humanity to imagine and design solutions for their future.”

Vigil-Maestas said students can go to the website to get ideas for their project.

“There are resources on the website, so if they have no idea what they want to do, they can go there or talk to a scientist. There are different tidbits about what they do and they can look at different areas they might not have thought of,” Vigil-Maestas said.

For instance, the website list’s the Millennium Project’s 15 Global Challenges Facing Humanity. Among them are sustainable development and climate change, clean water, the rich-poor gap, status of women, peace and conflict, and global ethics.