E2@MIT student Nadia Ferrer explains her team's underwater robotics project, which they designed to prevent a simulated oil spill from spreading.

E2@MIT staff, in collaboration with the MIT Sea Grant Program, offered Underwater Robotics as one of its six courses for the first time this year. The other courses were Architecture, Electronics, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Engineering Design, and Fluid Mechanics. In each course, students learned problem-solving methods in engineering and completed an assignment with a design-related task, practicing turning ideas into completed projects. Outside of coursework, students interacted with admissions and financial aid officers, visited labs, and conversed with MIT faculty and students. 

The Underwater Robotics students faced a challenging assignment inspired by a real-world challenge: to create a prototype ROV for British Petroleum. The ROV had to be capable of inspecting the pipes that deliver materials from the seafloor and containing and cleaning oil spills. The group was divided into three teams, each assigned one of three specific tasks: pipe inspection and monitoring, oil containment, and clean up and monitoring.

Via live webinar, David Young explains to MOSTEC students how his start-up, Bounce Imaging, will produce low-cost, complex imaging technology for soldiers and first responders.

Around 90 students in the MIT Online Science, Technology and Engineering Community (MOSTEC) participated in an interactive webinar with David Young, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Bounce Imaging, on Wednesday, July 17. In the hour-long session, Young shared his experiences developing a product named as one of the best inventions of 2012 by Time Magazine and the challenges and rewards involved in launching a start-up.

The webinar was part of a weekly series hosted by MOSTEC, an online education and enrichment program for top high school seniors from across the country. From July to August, the students complete online coursework and projects in science, engineering and technical writing, which culminates in a five-day conference on MIT campus. From September to January, the students interact with MIT faculty and staff and receive online mentorship from industry professionals.

During the webinar, Young said the idea behind Bounce Imaging was born in the wake of the earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010. Francisco Aguilar, the company's other co-founder, observed that local search and rescue teams faced difficulties without access to the kind of complex imaging technologies possessed by better-funded international groups.

The CORE program, launched in 2008, is a two-week program for rising eighth, ninth and tenth graders who attend public school in Boston and Cambridge. The goal of the program is to boost students' quantitative reasoning skills before they return to school in the fall. After assigning students to algebra or geometry classes based on a diagnostic exam, the CORE program staff instruct students through a combination of Khan Academy - an educational website that allows instructors to set individual goals and quantify progress and needs for each student - and interactive lectures.

The researchers began the event by emphasizing the importance of math concepts that students might find arbitrary today. "When I was your age," Daniels said, "I didn't really think of math as important. Now, looking back, I'd probably pay a lot more attention."