Our "We The Future" Contest Winners are an outstanding group of young people who will soon be embarking on an all expense paid trip to Washington, DC! On this trip, they will have the unique opportunity to see the the U.S. Constitution come to life through VIP tours of the U.S. Capitol, National Archives, participating in Constitution Day activities, and much more! 

As Best High School STEM Winner, in addition to the mentor trip, Gianna wins a $1,000 scholarship! She will be writing her trip sponsors to let them know what she is learning throughout the trip - reporting to you in real time!

Maya Robinson is a senior at Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts. She loves exploring interesting mathematical concepts and is developing a budding interest in coding. She has attended the Ross Mathematics Program and PROMYS over the past two summers, and she is hoping to continue deepening her understanding and appreciation of number theory this summer. Besides math, Maya enjoys being involved in theatre at Gann, whether it be acting in productions, being a House Manager, attending drama club meetings, or taking theatre classes. Every week, she looks forward to leading toddler services at her synagogue, where she feels a personal connection to the children and parents who come to pray.

This semester, Maya is taking a class on the Supreme Court, where her research for the We the Future Contest has helped her greatly. Her interest in U.S. history is relatively new, but it is growing quickly, and she cannot wait to see where this opportunity will take her!

Maya Describes Her Winning STEM Project: 

“What does an average high schooler know about the US Constitution? In order to start to answer that question, I coded an online quiz (https://mayarobinson613.wixsite.com/constitution/quizzes; click on “General Constitution Quiz”) about the Constitution which I shared with peers.

It turns out that coding a quiz was not quite as straightforward as I imagined that it would be. Though such quizzes may look simple on their surface, even getting my code to open a graphical window with a title and a clickable button was a huge achievement at first. I spent hours fixing problems like making a window disappear when the test-taker is done with a question so the next can pop up; disabling buttons after the user responds so that it is impossible to double-click an answer and get twice the points; and emailing results to my email inbox so that I could track scores and specific answers.

Achieving these goals required me to substantially deepen my knowledge of the computer language Python, including object-oriented programming and graphical user interface programming, as well as to find and utilize helpful code modules in books and online to solve specific problems.

When the general quiz was finished (copy of questions and answers attached; quiz code available on request), I sent it out to peers to collect data.”

Click here to read more about Maya’s winning STEM project, including tables that show data for 15 test-takers, of which 14 go to her high school.

Maya Also Created A Website: 
“Of course, quizzes test knowledge, and I wanted to teach as well. So, I also created a larger educational website composed of original explanations that I wrote, along with links to pre-existing informative resources. In doing so, I strengthened both my knowledge of and appreciation for the US Constitution and its history.
Click here to explore Maya’s winning STEM Project website

Click here for answers to Maya’s Quiz Questions!