Ocean Institute Girls Visit UCI Engineering Labs
May 28, 2025 - UCI engineering labs welcomed 40 middle and high school girls for the Ocean Institute’s 2025 Girls in Ocean Science Field Day on Saturday, May 17. Organized by professor Mo Li and Analía Rao of the UCI Samueli School of Engineering, in collaboration with the Ocean Institute, the event connected students with engineering role models and cutting-edge research labs.
The UCI Society of Women Engineers (SWE) kicked off the tour with five SWE members sharing their experiences as female undergraduate engineering students. “It’s easy to doubt your place as a woman in engineering, especially with so few visible role models,” said SWE president Julia McWilliams, “but through SWE, I’ve had the opportunity to meet countless strong, driven, and successful women who inspire me every day and are my biggest cheerleaders.”
McWilliams, a third-year mechanical engineering major, had always been drawn to STEM since a young age and currently works as a suspension/steering engineer on the Anteater Baja Racing team. “As I got older, my interest [in engineering] deepened as I realized I had the potential to make a meaningful impact on the world by designing and implementing the technologies of tomorrow to tackle global challenges,” McWilliams said.
Olivia Kaufman, a seventh grader from Aliso Viejo, found the SWE presentation inspiring. “It was cool seeing a whole group of women supporting each other in what they’re passionate about,” said Kaufman, who is an aspiring biology major.
“Events like this are impactful because they allow young girls to see themselves in spaces they may not have imagined before,” said Analía Rao, executive director of the Stacey Nicholas Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion, and organizer of the event. “By engaging with female students, researchers, and faculty, they’re not just learning about engineering—they’re seeing what's possible. That kind of representation is key to empowering the next generation of women in STEM.”
Students visited the UCI Robot Ecology Lab, led by Magnus Egerstedt, Stacey Nicholas Dean of the UCI Samueli School of Engineering. Known for its innovative environmental robot, the RaccoonBot, the lab showcases the intersection of robotics, computer science, and environmental engineering. The lab has a large arena where swarming robots are tested. The students enjoyed passing around a robot while learning about the lab.
Maddie Roebuck, a seventh grader at Warm Springs Middle School, enjoyed visiting the Robot Ecology Lab. “I want to get a better understanding of how we can help the world and if we can build anything to help people,” said Roebuck. With an interest in robotics, she plans to pursue engineering in her future.
In Chancellor’s Professor Brett Sanders’ UCI Flood Lab, civil and environmental engineering graduate student Tess Hachey lead the students in crafting their own conceptual beach model out of construction paper and pipe cleaners.
The students then put on hard hats and entered the SETH lab, where UCI civil and environmental engineering professor Mo Li’s group conducts research on next-generation structural materials and advanced manufacturing technologies for infrastructure.
Graduate student Kathryn Jones demonstrated robotic 3D printing technologies in the context of coastal protection, offshore wind energy, marine habitat support, and environmental impact of infrastructure-ocean interactions. She actively engaged the middle and high school students through hands-on demonstrations and quizzed them on the various applications using photographic and tactile samples as learning aids.
“They see how much energy, enthusiasm, and hard work our graduate students put into making all of this happen,” said Li. “From developing new materials from the nanoscale, to programming robots for novel manufacturing, to designing and building structures that large, and studying their interaction with the ocean environment – it’s all inspiration for these girls.” She said it's important for the girls to see the labs and be exposed to many possibilities, so they can begin to envision on how they can shape the future of engineering for sustainable solutions.
The female teens also visited the Hobbs laboratory, led by Shakira Hobbs, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, which researches sustainable solutions for food, water, and energy systems. Graduate students Maya El-Ajouz and Lauren Clearly gave each student lab coats, safety goggles, and led them in the creation of their own Winogradsky column experiment. The experiments consisted of combining sand, eggshells, egg yolks, and calcium carbonate to simulate microbial activity. Each student took home their column to observe bacterial growth in beach sand overtime.
For many of the girls, it was their first time on a university campus. The tour was one of the three stops in Orange County as a part of the Ocean Institute’s 2025 Girls in Ocean Science field day. The Ocean Institute, located in Dana Point, is an ocean education museum offering ocean science and maritime history programs to youth, teachers, and parents. It was an inspiring day as they caught a glimpse of a future for themselves in STEM.
- Caroline Lu
