Full STEM Ahead!

What a week it has been at the studio! It’s been full STEM ahead - and that’s not a typo - we put our blood and sweat into STEM Fest, the annual event hosted by the College of Health and Human Sciences that seeks to increase public awareness of STEM initiatives, activities, careers, and education for people around northern Illinois.

Dozens of studio members joined us in the lower level of the Founders Library to present their work and showcase the studio. For example, our first Northern Exposure speaker of the year, Dr. Richard Ortiz, along with two members of his research team, Ingrid and Drew, displayed an F1-inspired reaction time game that demonstrates how the brain responds to stimuli over time.

At another table, we had one of our members, Gabrielle Foreman (left) present her work from Mindful Art, a relaxing and creative event led by Dr. Lynn Hermann, a certified Therapeutic Arts Practitioner and Professor of Public Health. Mindful Art is part of the CHILL program, where participants engage in collaborative projects, mindful art practices, and student-led media like the CHILL Podcast. At their STEM Fest table, Dr. Hermann had her student interns teach people box breathing - a way to reconnect with one’s breath for a calming effect.

In another part of the library, studio member Hubert Stasik helped a young visitor with Nex Playground, an interactive gaming system that tracks hand and body movement and turns it into interactive gameplay. Similar to a Wii or Xbox 360 Kinect System, Nex Playground tracks your body and hand movement, and then uses that as the controller. You can play Fruit Ninja, whack-a-mole, soccer, and a rhythm-based game. It’s open to all ages, but the kiddos seemed particularly drawn to this one!

Inside the Huskieverse, Isaac Smith explained what the program does and what’s planned for the future. He mainly talked about Vespa Mode, a simulator that he built with Santos Rodriguez-Hughes using Unreal Engine.

Now that STEM Fest is done, we’re attending to our usual projects and programs. The Huskieverse is getting a thorough cleanup in order to utilize the space more effectively, and its leader, Adam Bougher, is getting his crew ready and hyped to work on the Vespa Mode project. He’s also paying attention to his student organization, the Indie Game Developers Organization (IGDO).

Other studio members are hard at work making promotional content for several of our upcoming events like Demo Day and RHoK NIU. Check out this awesome poster one of our student members created!

When you hear the word “hacking,” what do you think of? Do you picture a hooded man in a dark room hunched over at his desk, surrounded by energy drinks, typing vigorously on a chunky keyboard, his face dimly lit by a glowing screen with hieroglyphic lines of key lime font? If you do, no one could blame you. Hollywood has conditioned us to believe in this image of hacking, but realistically, the only true part of it is the hoodie - computers run best in the cold!

One of our signature events, Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), flips the script on the “evil genius hacker” stereotype and allows NIU students, faculty, and community members to put their tech skills to work on real-world problems faced by real people. This year, we’re focusing on the Huskie Closet!

The Huskie Closet provides free clothing to NIU students in need. Spearheaded by Julie Ann O’Connell, the Closet takes in, cleans, sorts, and gives away hundreds of items each month. Like any non-profit, it faces its own unique challenges. The Closet needs help managing its inventory more efficiently, engaging volunteers, enhancing student experience, lowering barriers to entry, and increasing donations. It’s our job to help them out!

Students who participate in RHoK will use their talent to scope out the problem, brainstorm ideas, create prototypes, and finally, present them to a panel of judges, where their projects will be recognized and implemented according to the Closet’s evaluation.

Event Structure:

• ​Day 1: Problem scoping and idea generation in a dynamic expo-style session, where teams will pitch their ideas.

• ​Between Days: Teams will visit Huskie Closet, gain firsthand experience, and refine their ideas.

• ​Day 2: Teams will finalize their prototypes and present them to a panel of judges, with opportunities for implementation and recognition!

If you’re a hacker with a hoodie and a heart, please register for RHoK and make a difference in your community!

One of our alumni, Riyan Mohammed, recently built an app to help students like himself to focus and study using the Pomodoro technique. According to Wikipedia, “the Pomodoro Technique is a time management method… [that] uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.” Developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, the technique is so called by the Italian word for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student.

As he stated in his LinkedIn post, Mohammed has used Pomodoro for the past seven years, but he was unable to find an app that was a) minimalistic and b) free from constant advertisements, so he made his own, Doro, which is now available in the App Store and coming soon to Google Play.

This is the kind of innovation that happens when students are given the resources they need to succeed and grow their skills. We’re so proud of the talent and hard work that Mohammed put into this app, and we hope to see more work like it in the future!

We’re excited to host the first event in this semester’s series of “Unplugged Conversations!” On Thursdays from 3:00-4:00 PM in the 71 North Partnership Studio, we’ll gather with students, faculty, and community members alike to put our phones down and connect through simple face-to-face conversation. It’s a great chance to slow down, socialize, and get to know people in a relaxed environment. Come as you are!

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