Girls of Steel InvenTeams Update #8: EurekaFest!

This June our team attended EurekaFest – a celebration of the 2022 InvenTeams – at MIT in Cambridge, MA to showcase the BuzzBand! We had so much fun presenting our invention to an audience and meeting the other InvenTeams.

 

Day 1: Monday, June 13, 2022

We started our journey bright and early at the Pittsburgh International Airport and flew to Boston where we regrouped with Grace at MIT’s McCormick Hall. 

Afterwards, we were ready to take on Boston! Some of our team members even experienced the subway for the first time! We explored the Freedom Trail and historical buildings such as Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church.

Traveling down the streets of the North End in Boston we went back in time to rustic Italy, if Italy was infested with lobsters. We’ve never yearned to wear a white linen outfit so much in our lives – for the aesthetic and for the weather. The sweltering sun beat down on the BuzzBand team and we trudged along swaying towards any store with open windows and air conditioning. Luckily we found a lovely water fountain, also acting as a drinking source for the adorable, but surprisingly buff, pigeons. After grabbing some lobster rolls that seemed a bit overpriced, we stopped by some shade in the North End park and scarfed down our lunch with the ferocity of lions. 

We even dragged mentors into a vintage store. We’re not sure if they enjoyed it, but we did, and we think Joe would’ve looked dapper in a leather jacket.

After spending some time together as a team, we were ready to head back to MIT and meet the other InvenTeams. Lemelson-MIT hosted a pizza party and we enjoyed desserts from the ice cream truck. 

After eating well we were ready to get to work. We ended the night by going through our new LMIT swag bags and rehearsing for our upcoming presentation.

Day 2: Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Rise and shine! We unfortunately started the morning off with disappointment when we were reminded of the valuable lesson that water expands when it freezes.

Nevertheless we persisted and bravely headed to breakfast at New Vassar with the other InvenTeams. 

After breakfast we immediately headed to Building 36 (which the team struggled to find because of construction.) We were the leaders, the spear headers, the first line of offense. Our team navigated the safari of Boston in order to get to our belongings that were hidden in a classroom somewhere deep in the jungle. Teams were following us, lives on the line. Multiple doors rejected us, and after some Sherlock Holmes detective work, we cracked the code and got into the forbidden fortress. Our destination had the packages waiting for us and we got right to work. There was a catch. Some of our required materials for operation were back in the dorm room, so some brave souls ventured back. During our time, progress was made and final touches were added to our project. 

Once all of our stuff was unpacked we headed to the MIT Student Center for welcome presentations. We also participated in fun networking challenges to meet new people and we worked on collaborating to produce a silly invention pitch video. We had so much fun getting to know everyone!

The seniors were later separated into a different room to listen to different instructors’ college journey stories and fill out reflection worksheets. Meanwhile the underclassmen learned valuable admissions advice from an admissions counselor. 

While our lunch food wasn’t very memorable (we’ll get to the good ones later) the company was entertaining. We noticed the assistant photographer of the event, AJ, eating alone, and invited her to our table. Little did she know how obsessed we were with her cool hair and fun jokes (to cue everyone to smile even when in the miserable heat. We went outside to take a group photo at 77 Massachusetts Avenue. Our courageous photographer Mark even risked his life by walking onto a busy street to get this picture of us!

Then we went on to the highlight of our day: the MIT tour with our incredible tour guide, Chelle! We started off the tour as the smallest group and since we were so small (and fast) we sped through the tour and went on to visit some ~extra special~ places like the Cheetah Lab. We were so grateful for the graduate students and postdocs that gave us live demonstrations of the robots they were working on. Yes, their robot did tippy-tappy’s and a flip for us. Yes, it was absolutely amazing. The robots were really cool, but we think that it was even cooler how invested, enthusiastic, and friendly they were. They clearly loved what they did and wanted to share their passion. 

Exhausted from all this knowledge, some members decided to take a boba break. 

Primary Source: Aditri

“Elise and I convinced our mentor Joe to take us [to get boba], and that’s exactly what we did. The trip there taught me a lot of things: Boston gets HOT, Joe grew up in Saratoga Springs, New York, and Elise was a very fast walker. All things considered, the boba was very good and worth it and the walk was not the worst thing ever.”

Energized with boba, we then headed to the Johnson Hockey Rink for the design challenge. All the students were split into new teams to create balloon structures that we were tasked to transport across the room. 

After the design challenge we ate dinner at the student center and headed back to McCormick Hall where we found video game trucks and lawn games waiting for us! We were also so happy to see Diya! For the lawn games, the mentors went down and cornhole! There was dust flying out of the bean bags every time they hit the wooden boards. They also absolutely did NOT (wink wink) win any of the video games. 

Primary Source: Elise

“I’ve never seen Grace and Justina stress out so much… to no avail. Sarah absolutely decimates everyone in fighting games. Some people absolutely busted down to so much Selena Gomez. Much screaming and singing ensued. Aditi is a certified MEGASTAR according to JustDance. ”

After our party, we got serious and continued rehearsing for our presentation the next day!

 

Day 3: Wednesday, June 15, 2022

 

Our big day was here!

We started the morning with a warm breakfast and a lot of tea. Joe exchanged a vanilla chai tea with one of our team members and it was a unanimous consensus that Joe’s personal supply of tea bags is far better than any tea MIT could ever provide. Luckily, someone we don’t know slurped down the MIT tea that our team member got before receiving the bag from Joe.

Because of Joe’s high quality tea, we were filled with positive energy while bringing our materials to the Stata Center and setting up our tables. We hyped ourselves up by blasting Taylor Swift down the halls of the Stata Center and sang an Acapella of the absolute banger “Dancing Queen” from the cinematic masterpiece ‘Mamma Mia’. 

Exhilarated by ABBA, we felt confident for our presentation and blew the audience away. 

It was so interesting to learn about why each team picked the problem they did and how they chose to fix it. Oftentimes, the geographic location of the team played a large role in the problem they chose to solve! 

For lunch one option was a grilled chicken pesto sandwich with a side of fruit, brownie, and lemon bar. We were very impressed by this. 

Now that we were well fed with only the best food of Cambridge, we headed on to our showcase. We met plenty of people interested in hearing more about the BuzzBand.  Two of our members collected feedback from visitors and handed out business cards.

Then it was time for the star of the show – the bees. While there were many directors that were interested in the innards and quirks of the BuzzBand’s electrical components, it seemed that visitors traveled from across the world to be blessed with the sight of our crochet bees. 

Smiles were bright and eyes were starry as few personnel were gifted bees. Now we’ve learned from experience that once the bees are out, they’re out, so we photographed each person with their bee to keep track of them (a scrapbook is being made to commemorate the Eurekafest  nostalgia). 

Although there were many people striving to get some BuzzBand swag (bees, stickers, and rosie hair bands) they were in limited stock. We even witnessed the beginnings of a tussle over the last perfectly polka-dotted hairbands. People quite literally swarmed our table (and a pillar) to come and see our posters, demos, certificates, and merch. It was truly un-bee-lievable!

Our booth was even paid a special visit by the adorable Winston the pug!

Absolutely exhausted from the showcase, we were absolutely delighted with our dinner. Lemelson-MIT, you really showed up with this one!

The mentors also played a prank on us that was HILARIOUS! We had all gone to take a picture at this green screen area and upon returning, nobody could find their seat. We were so baffled that we were looking at other tables to see if we returned to the wrong table. Upon looking like lost toddlers in a grocery store, one of our members caught a clever mentor attempting to film us undercover. This new information prompted us to look around and see that the table was flipped. Immediately everyone found their seats except for one especially lost toddler who had to be told over the store announcements where to go. After an embarrassingly long time, we reoriented ourselves and sat down to collect our awards. 

Day 4: Thursday, June 16, 2022

Sadly all good things must come to an end. For our last day in Boston we decided to go to Flour (a bakery). The chai lattes were a hit and we attempted to prank our mentors back.

Excited to make the most of our last day, we crossed the Harvard Bridge. From this experience comes one word: smoots.  Some vital history lessons were learned that day, specifically the one about the iconic man William Smoot who laid 364.4 times along the bridge from Cambridge to Boston (give or take an ear). 

Once in Boston we hot-girl-walked around, over to the Public Gardens to go to the highly sought after, Swan Boats. 

^ we miss our professional photographers dearly.

Thanks to our brave driver/peddler Sam, we saw some strange sights – LIFE! There were many ducks and even a turtle on a cute little bridge to a heavenly island. 

The experience was so magical that Elise purchased a lovely quacking duck (Richard Duck). 

Walking back to the inevitable shuttle-ride back to the airport we were heartbroken, yet not depressed and screaming “Livin’ On A Prayer” which was not pro-bono, it was Bon Jovi. 

Until next time!