The high school student and the doctoral student at the University of Virginia were engaged in a slight tug of war over a burning Bunsen burner.

“Normally, if you try to bend this glass, it shatters,” said Sarah Beth Holles, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering who conducted a glass-pulling demonstration in Elizabeth J. Opila’s lab on Thursday.

“But when we heat it,” Holles continued, “we reach this softening point where it becomes a more viscous material that we can actually do something with. So, as you can see, we start to bend the glass.”

Normally this glass will shatter if you try to bend it.

When the 32 high school students who participated in the summer session, held Aug. 5-9 at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, studied the right temperature to bend (but not completely melt) glass or how a robotic arm might be moved using the electrical impulses of a person’s thoughts, the metaphor was always the same: With the power of the mind, you can do amazing things.

This is the heart of the Engineering Girls (formerly Biomedical Tech Girls) approach. Show girls and women the power of STEM up close, make it accessible, and put students at ease with activities and discussions.

Petra Reinke, professor of materials science and head of the technical physics program, explained to the students: “You can guess. Guessing is always perfectly acceptable.”

Bending, breaking and translating

UVA’s Department of Biomedical Engineering launched the annual program in 2013 with support from the Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research. This year, faculty and staff members Leyf Starling, Ryan Henry, Hannah Moore and David Chen led the team.

In addition to the existing biomedical engineering program, they have added a civil and environmental engineering program and basic skills in the first year of study.

“In civil engineering, students were able to break concrete, bend rebar and brainstorm about sustainable cities of the future,” said Chen, who serves as executive director of the Coulter Center. “In biomedical engineering, they learned a whole different side of engineering, like pipettes, talking about capillaries and muscles and working with patient needs.”

We have been working on a glowing pill box for people with Parkinson’s disease.

Lena Byard, an 11th-grader at Deep Run High School in Glen Allen who is graduating early, took part in the biomedical studies course.

“We’ve been working on a glowing pill box for Parkinson’s patients,” Byard said of her project this week. “Sometimes they suffer from memory loss, so they can’t remember what pills to take or when to take them.”

She added: “I came into biomedical engineering without really knowing much about the field itself or how it can help people. As we worked throughout the week, I learned more about people with certain diseases or disabilities and also what we can build to help them.”

For your kind consideration

Engineering Girls helped all pre-college attendees better understand how diverse engineering careers can be and how much fun they could have in it. Students interviewed said the experience would put UVA at the top of their application list.

Also notable were the many small acts of kindness that occurred throughout the week. Healthy salads were accompanied by sweets. Special lectures led to side conversations and emails.

A high school student reached out to Allison Martens, a rising fourth-year biomedical engineering major, for help connecting with a faculty member about her interests. Martens was more than happy to introduce the two.

Tech Girls founder Kim Wilkens, an educator and tech accessibility advocate who received her doctorate from the UVA School of Education in 2023, said she is happy to hand over the reins of the program she led for over a decade because she knows it is in good hands. Now she is off to improve tech equity in South America with a company she co-founded, Roversa Robotics.