Program

Join us for a Welcome session to kick-off the Summit. The session features Mary Ellen Randall, 2025 IEEE President-Elect, Tim Kurzweg, VP Educational Activities, and Stamatis Dragoumanos, Chair, IEEE Pre-University Education Coordinating Committee.

Speakers: Khadijah Thibodeaux and Heidi Gibson, Smithsonian Science Education Center

Participants will be introduced to the free Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides designed for student-centered, hands-on STEM experiences for ages 11-18. This series of guides has reached over 8.1 million students and are inspired by the role youth can play in determining and achieving a sustainable future. This presentation will mirror the three main sections found within each part of the guides: discover, understand, and act.

The Discover section uses an asset-based approach to sustainability education. Activities create relevance by supporting youth to recognize their existing knowledge, local context and connect local communities to global issues. The Understand section turns participants into community data gatherers and innovators. Activities include analyzing data to identify trends, exploring aspects of the innovation process, engineering potential solutions. The Act section scaffolds students to innovate to take personal and collective action. Activities will showcase the variety of ways past students have taken action and will provide opportunities for educators to support youth action-taking.

Speaker: Prashant Nair

Session Description: Success in STEM competitions, innovation challenges & hackathons not only inspires and motivates but also puts school-aged children on a fast track towards pursuing STEM careers, which is one of the main objectives of the IEEE STEM summit. This presentation is thereby of benefit to all STEM stakeholders as school-aged children, teachers, STEM enthusiasts, and of course IEEE volunteers. This presentation leverages the experience of the presenter in mentoring student teams at both pre-university and university level towards spectacular victories and successes in 30+ international and national innovation challenges, STEM competitions and hackathons. This includes ATL Marathon, ATL Tinkerpreneur, Smart India Hackathon, IEEE R10 humanitarian technology challenge, and representing India as part of the national hackathon team for Singapore-India Hackathon and felicitated by honorable Prime Minister of India. This presentation focuses on operational strategies and tips for school-aged students towards acing STEM competitions with focus areas including team formation, STEM competition selection, ideation, prototyping, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), evaluation rubrics, preparing impactful presentations, and pitching. This presentation also focusses on best practices and tools such as Technology Readiness Levels (TRL), mindmaps, fishbone diagram, Business Model Canvas so as to help them excel in STEM competitions and hackathons. This is a playbook for winning STEM competitions so as to facilitate students to unleash their creativity, innovation, and teamwork.

Speaker: Megha Arakeri

Session Description: The digital divide continues to be a major barrier to equitable STEM education worldwide, disproportionately affecting students in rural, low-income, and underrepresented communities. This talk explores inclusive strategies to democratize STEM learning by addressing systemic gaps in access, infrastructure, pedagogy, and participation.

Drawing from real-world outreach initiatives, educational technology deployments, and community-based programs, the session highlights practical approaches that educators, policymakers, and technologists can implement to ensure no learner is left behind. Key themes include low-cost digital interventions, localized content development, inclusive curriculum design, mentorship models, and the use of AI and open-source platforms to support remote and personalized learning.

Participants will leave with actionable insights and a framework to evaluate and enhance inclusivity in their own STEM environments. The session also invites dialogue on building sustainable, culturally responsive educational ecosystems that nurture talent from every corner of society.

Speaker: Parkavi A

Session Description: This interactive workshop introduces school students to the exciting world of Prompt Engineering—an essential skill for effectively communicating with AI tools like ChatGPT. Students will learn how to craft clear, creative, and impactful prompts to get better responses from AI models. Through fun activities, real-world examples, and live demos, they will explore how to use AI for learning, problem-solving, and creative projects. By the end of the session, students will understand how to think like prompt engineers and use AI responsibly and effectively in their academic and everyday lives.

Speaker: Jason Erdreich

Design Thinking shouldn’t be a class, or an assignment, or even a module students engage with. Instead, it’s an approach to navigating our ever changing and technologically advanced world. Join educator, author, and patented inventor Jason Erdreich as we get hands-on with our learning by looking how design thinking can be incorporated across the K-12 and university space through problem-solving, empathy, and interdisciplinary learning environments.

During this session, you can network with other STEM Summit participants to share your experience with STEM outreach.