Student Leader - Xueying Ding (Age 17) - based in MA

I was invited to attend NIF’s Teen Signal workshop last Thursday to write a blog about it, and it was an interesting experience. Overall, the main takeaway from it can relate to treating kids (and especially teenagers) as people. While it might seem simple in theory, I think that society has had a longstanding issue with viewing kids as property or with less rights ( Rome's Pater Familias laws, Howard Dully receiving a lobotomy at 12, Why Children Believe They Are Owned - PMC ). Around this...

A while back, this post came up on my Instagram feed, amidst the usual flood of STEM related (getting force fed calculus, computer science, or other STEM things is very effective against doomscrolling) accounts I typically follow. It was interesting, but I didn’t think much of it, simply sending it to a friend and then taking it as a sign to get back to studying. It is an interesting piece, and now just because it merges something people may be tempted to call "soulless," robotics, with art...

Recently I decided to take on the challenge of creating something more interdisciplinary than what I usually create. Fashion design has a lot of different aspects—robotics is typically not one of them. This is how I ended up with my current art project, which has taken on a life of its own. It seems to get more complex every time I work. By taking inspiration from other designs online, such as this , I am in the process of creating a set of articulated wings, which will eventually be part of...