Bay Area Teens Spend Summer Innovating, Competing, and Coding for Impact

Bay Area high school students are spending their summers innovating through hardware projects and coding safety tools for national competitions. At Ygnacio Valley High, students developed a phone-controlled exoskeleton hand, which earned them top honors at MIT’s EurekaFest and is currently patent pending. Eighteen-year-old Mizan Rupan-Tompkins created an autonomous tool to help prevent mid-air collisions at non-towered airports, with plans for implementation at ten Bay Area airports soon. Additionally, 180 teen coders gathered at Hack Club’s Undercity event in San Francisco, where Meghana Madiraju pushed for greater gender equity in tech. In Mountain View, Garage 803 Racing students are racing to finish their solar-powered car ahead of the Solar Car Challenge.

They are building everything by hand and learning from scavenged parts. These initiatives not only foster innovation but also empower students to tackle real-world challenges and compete nationally. The commitment to hands-on learning in tech and engineering reflects a growing trend among youth to engage in impactful projects.