STEM-In-Action Spring Scoop: Fight the Fomites

In true Friday fashion, we're back to the blog for another great catch-up with our amazing STEM-In-Action grant winning teams. If you're new here - WELCOME! The U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-In-Action Grant awards eCYBERMISSION teams up to $5,000 to develop their projects into mature and scalable solutions in their community. Typically, we award this honorary grant to five teams, but in 2020 ten lucky teams took home the prestigious award. After our follow-ups in the Fall, we are circling back around to all our SIAG teams to see what kind of progress they've made on their missions. Today, we're headed down south to Miami to catch up with Fight the Fomites!

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Hello everyone, welcome back to our blog post! This is our second post and today we will be giving you all an update on our project. Just as a reminder, we are team Fight the Fomites, and our team members include Noah Karp Cohen, Harrison Delisle, and Leo Oliveira. We are from Miami Beach Senior High School and are in 10th grade. 

For our eCYBERMISSION project, we evaluated the bacterial presence on the Miami Metrorail System. We wanted to evaluate the Miami Metrorail as it is a very common and essential part of our public transportation system. We tested frequently touched surfaces at different stations and train cars, in order to see what types of bacteria were growing and what risks our community was being exposed to. In our results, we found high levels of dangerous bacteria. Due to this, we wanted to spread awareness around the necessary hygienic steps needed to stay healthy. We were able to spread awareness through our Stem-In-Action project. 

Since receiving our grant, we have carried out events at two schools, in which we spread personalized hand sanitizer bottles and snacks to the students. The first event was at our own school (Miami Beach Senior High) and was a massive success. Hundreds of students received our hand sanitizer bottles and snacks. The second event took place at our previous middle school (Nautilus Middle School). This event went perfectly and we are very excited to expand our project to more and more schools.

Additionally, we have confirmed the prices of our items for the repeat experiment, and the procedure will be occurring shortly. Our microbiologist, Dr. Miller, has verified all of our products, and they should be arriving soon. We plan on performing our experiment as soon as the items arrive. Lastly, we have contacted our local Miami commissioner Higgins, in order to try and receive support to keep expanding the project. 

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Protecting everyone's safety from germs and bacteria is a super relevant topic this days and team Fight the Fomites has taken on the task of making their community safer as we all start to slowly reenter a post-pandemic world. Their commitment to the betterment of the Miami Metrorail will surely make the lives of the citizens in their community much more stress-free. Another blog, another team continuing to make the world a better place.

-Mission Control

Colleen Minan
AEOP Communications & Marketing Specialist
cminan@nsta.org