Summer Scholar’s Robots Lead the Way to STEM Careers

Thanks to NIF & Photon Science Summer Scholar Kaavya Nimmakayala, robots programmed by local youths will be helping spark interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) careers for years to come.

With the inspiration and contributions of her local Girl Scout leaders and Livermore Lab volunteers, Nimmakayala developed a passion for robotics and spent half her school years building more than 25 of the bots. That effort culminated in Nimmakayala devoting the final summer after her high school graduation to running a community STEM project for children, while also working full time programming NIF target alignment software.

"I thought it was important," Nimmakayala said of her heavy volunteer commitment on top of her work schedule. "I wanted to give other kids what people had given to me, and I wanted to take advantage of opportunities offered to me."

The seeds of Nimmakayala’s robotics success were planted at Livermore Lab.

A decade ago, a Girl Scout robotics program launched with a grant from the Laboratory and generous volunteer time from LLNL scientists and engineers established the troop focused solely on robotics, said current troop leader Melanie Young. And it was in that troop that Nimmakayala learned how to engineer all manner of droids and bots, including one that fights fires.

"I consider Kaavya one of our great success stories," said physicist Dan Kalantar, a NIF&PS senior Target Area scientist. He has been one of Nimmakayala’s long-time mentors in Girl Scout robotics and the one who convinced her she had what it takes to become a NIF&PS summer intern despite her youth. While there’s no age limit for Summer Scholar positions, it’s rare for a high school student to earn one of the highly competitive 40 to 50 internships each summer.

Nimmakayala, now 18, has been accepted into the School of Engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and is entering as a freshman this academic year.

At NIF she worked with Alignment Operations Manager Shannon Ayers and Rick Wilson, Alignment Systems Integration lead, writing computer code for the facility’s Target Alignment Assistant Tool (TAAT) scripts that automate the steps for target, diagnostic, and laser beam alignments for Control Room operators.

Process Improvements

As her mentor working one-on-one with Nimmakayala, Ayers said she was impressed with how quickly she picked up the TAAT scripts code and the systems for the "Splunk" dashboard, which reads the data collected by a TAAT script during a NIF shot (Splunk Enterprise software is used to log and analyze data and to organize large quantities of data). Those data are used both for understanding the health of the alignment systems and for providing information to help guide process improvements.

"She has done a great job learning how both systems work and interface, and has delivered impactful products to the program that will help guide process improvements activities planned for the next year," Ayers said.

When not working at the Lab, Nimmakayala’s summer was spent running a free robotics program at Owls Landing, a local affordable housing complex. The program was coordinated through Horizons Family Counseling for the Livermore Police Department and the city of Livermore Housing and Human Services Division. Her program drew nine children, most in the target age group (middle-schoolers), although to her surprise some elementary-school-aged children also stuck with the five-week program.

Both Nimmakayala and Horizons program manager Lynn Gardner hope her robotics program will be able to find funding to continue as a summer program for youths without access to STEM programs. Her project was aimed at earning the a Girl Scout Gold Award, the capstone of the scouting world that only some 5 percent of young women qualify for, by providing a project that benefits the community and is also sustainable.

For the legacy requirement, Nimmakayala developed a curriculum designed to be plug-and-play. It includes ready-made robot kits costing about $50 and a manual for a five-week program enabling children to assemble a small robot, about the size of a bread loaf, and perform basic programming to run the bot.

Her program was funded by donations from her Girl Scout troops, Horizons/Livermore city programs, the Livermore Police Department, and the Alameda County Probation and Housing and Human Services departments. Gardner handled outreach to families in the complex while Nimmakayala recruited volunteers like Kalantar and trained others, including the Livermore outreach coordinator, on how to run an effective robotics program for beginners.

Gardner saw a positive outcome from both families and children, who were excited about what they were able to accomplish, she said. "Many of them felt it helped them to focus. I saw it in the way they talked about themselves—they could show they could program a robot. They felt they had done something physical with their hands."

One of the challenges Gardner faces, even with free programs like summer robotics, is that children and families from non-traditional and lower socioeconomic backgrounds feel a lack of connection and decline to participate in educational enhancement programs and identify possible future careers. "We’re just trying to connect those pieces to help the family get a stronger foundation," she said, "and programs like these are an important part of building that foundation."

Rise of the Robots

Robotics became all the rage among high-achieving students in the 2000s, complete with travel competitions and subgroups focused on Lego robots, ozobots, androids, underwater robot challenges, and others. Nimmakayala caught the bot fever growing up in the Tri-Valley, but when she joined an after-school robotics program in middle school she quickly soured. "There was a tendency of the guys to take over," she said, sometimes grabbing the robots and tools out of her hands.

She could have just moved on. She competed on her school’s swim and water polo teams and became active in the Model United Nations programs, with a passion for learning Japanese (she still swims daily; for fun, she loves the movies and hanging out with her beagle, Chip).

But she was intrigued with robotics and didn’t want to quit. Her family found her a Girl Scout connection to robotics through Young’s troop, where she met Kalantar, whose own daughters were scouts. While they are now aged out of Robo-scouts, Kalantar continues to volunteer for Young’s troop because of girls like Nimmakayala, who gain so much through the program.

"I’ve seen girls walk in," he said, "not ever having held a hammer, screwed in a wood screw, not knowing how to turn on a power tool, how to solder, the basics of circuits, resistors, oscilloscopes, computer programming, all those things on a basic level (that) go into mechanics.

"That’s what Kaavya learned in Girl Scouts," he said, "and that’s the overview she was trying to give her own students through her robotics summer program—allowing them to see that this is a cool project and they could be the ones to actually assemble the robot and make it move."

Through robotics, Scout leader Young’s own daughters also grew into confident technology-savvy women. The younger daughter is a junior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her sister is a graduate of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California-San Diego.

"One of the things we feel strongly about," Young said, "is that, if you don’t get them in middle school, then you don’t have any girls (in STEM careers). "We’re an important access point."