Franklin Pierce High School and Washington High School at NVIDIA

October 24, 2019 | Franklin Pierce High School and Washington High School at NVIDIA | by Lily Kim

On Oct. 24, 19 scholars from Franklin Pierce and Washington High Schools attended a field trip to NVIDIA! NVIDIA is a technology company in Redmond that creates specialized processors, software, Artificial Intelligence, and graphics technology. At the office we were warmly welcomed and led to their conference room, where we received visitor badges and were introduced to our NVIDIA hosts.

We started our field trip with an office tour, which gave us the opportunity to see their work spaces and experience their work environment. We were also introduced to Baxter. Baxter is a robot that NVIDIA is in the process of developing that could assist with household chores in the future! After a discussion about what a robot is, how this technology could help us today, and the potential for future inventions, we divided into small groups. We were challenged to create our own robots!

We needed to develop a robot that met a need. We had to identify the necessary power source and materials needed to produce the robot. We also got to decide how much we would sell our product for.

The great staff at NVIDIA joined us as mentors during the challenge. It was so nice working with them and experiencing what it would be like to work on a development team.

After presenting our robot ideas to the group, we enjoyed a delicious lunch. Then a panel of female staff members talked to us about their roles at NVIDIA and why they chose to pursue careers in STEM, and they encouraged us to do the same. Lopa Sarangi, Christi DeCuir, Ann Pottier and Qian Wan all shared their stories and really helped us to better understand the path to careers in technology and why we should consider these fields. I believe most of the students who attended will definitely take their advice!

Thank you to IGNITE for providing us with such a great opportunity, and THANK YOU to the amazing team at NVIDIA: Lopa, Christi, Ann, Qian, Ashley Turk, Rachel Hazelman, Matt Radecki, Mustafa Fanaswala, Jennifer Wu, Michael Kroepfl, Yashraj Narang, Sagar Rawal, John Irwin, Charu Kalani, and Birgit Henke, who welcomed us to your office and made this a fun, informative, and truly inspiring experience!