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August 2016 • SMT Magazine 81 IMS AND STEM: BUILDING A STRONGER FUTURE Americans invited, and next year in Hawaii, it's going to be a similar case where we hope for a very diverse audience. Matties: There are quite a few females and males in this group today, which is great to see, as one of your speakers noted earlier. They're going to go on a tour today. What's the hope that they get out of this tour? Lardizabal: What you get out of a tour, you find out that an engineer is a real person, and actu- ally they love to talk about what they live and do for their life, and they want you to know more about that and how you can affect the world around you. I like to tell them there are people here walking these halls who have cre- ated things that fly out in space, things that we use in our everyday life in the wireless world and things that defend us. Matties: A view of technology that they don't oth- erwise get. Lardizabal: That's right. They might see it on the news and you're more than one step re- moved, and here it's actually the pieces of equipment and the people who make them and make that happen. Matties: Last year, you had Joey Hudy as a key- note speaker for these kids. Are you following the same format with the keynote speaker here as well? Lardizabal: There are a couple of keynote speak- ers. It's a little different this year. One focus that the San Francisco leaders (Kelvin Yuk and Mike Chapman) had keyed in on was having people who have a non-traditional background. The speaker right now, John Chapman, designs lighting systems for large projects like skyscrap- ers, but he's got a very diverse background. He's an active surfer, who works in a cool engineer- ing field, and he's a normal person. That's what we want to get them to know. Matties: How is a program like this funded? Lardizabal: It's funded very enthusiastically by the exhibitors here at IMS, for the most part. They contribute their support at different lev- els of sponsorship, and that's what's kept the program going, and they're never not there. There's always more each year. We sometimes have some funding from the National Science Foundation, too. Matties: Past the event and the show today, what kind of work does your group do in between the shows? Lardizabal: In between the shows, the MTT group is actively involved in student programs with IEEE chapters throughout the country and around the world. There are student design competitions and a number of outreach efforts. Matties: A lot of meetings that they can go and at- tend to keep the energy. Is there online interaction with the kids as well and websites for these kids? Lardizabal: For the college students there is a strong presence, and for the younger students the Internet is, I almost expect, an outlet for ex- citing and continuing interests. I see one route where that may happen. The IEEE may have a website available for continuity for IMS from year to year where the different cities can com- municate. What's important there is actually so the students can communicate and see what was done at the other IMS shows, and as the teachers learn about where they can get infor- mation about STEM, if we can connect these