The MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI) Online Educational Program ( FREE Summer Program )

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MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute (https://beaverworks.ll.mit.edu/CMS/bw/bwsi) is a rigorous, world-class STEM program for talented and passionate high school students.  The four-week summer program at MIT teaches STEM skills through project-based, workshop-style courses.  BWSI program started in 2016 and it was a huge success (4-week residential program at MIT, no-cost to students, 46 students from 24 high schools, 24 from out-of-state and 22 from Boston area as daytime students).  The program was expanded in 2017 to 3 projects (Autonomous RACECAR, Autonomous UAV Racing and Autonomous Cognitive Assistant) with corresponding 3 online courses as prerequisites.  Over 350 students signed up for the online courses and 98 students participated in the summer program (35 students from 17 MA high schools and 63 students from 32 out-of-state high schools).  In addition, two teams from Mexico (12 students) and two teams from Nauset High School, Cape Cod, MA, (8 students) participated in the final competition for the RACECAR.  Last year the program was expanded to 8 projects with the following 5 additional projects: Hack a 3D Printer, Data Science for Health and Medicine, Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking, Build a CubeSat, and UAS SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar).  For the summer program 198 students from 105 high schools around the country (from 31 states) participated.  In addition, teams from Mexico (15 students), Canada (4 students) and Nauset High School (4 students) also participated in the program.

For BWSI 2019 the following 2 projects were added:  Remote Sensing for Crisis Response and Design of Assistive Technology.  For the summer program 239 students from 129 high schools around the country (from 27 states) and teams from Mexico (20 students) and Nauset High School (5 students) participated.  We also ran a pilot middle school program, Autonomous mini-RACECAR Grand Prix (24 students from 13 middle schools in the Boston area) which was a huge success.  We plan to expand the middle school program this year.