Innovation Month Kicks Off At South High
Natick resident Max Wallack, a student at Marlborough's Advanced Math and Science Academy, spoke at this morning's kickoff for Worcester Innovation Month. He's demonstrating a three-legged stool that also serves as a walker that he invented.
More than 600 middle school students helped kick off Worcester Innovation Month with an assembly at South High Community School this morning, the first in a month-long series of events to get more students interested in engineering, science and math careers.
Nick Palumbo, a junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was on hand as a former cast member of WGBH's "Design Squad" show, which will start its third season soon. Palumbo was in the show's second season as a high school senior and is now studying to be biomedical engineer so he can design tools for surgeons.
"I get my inspiration from everything around me. There is engineering in the chairs we're sitting in and the stage. Know what's around you," he said. He spent two years at the city's Doherty Memorial High School and his last two years at the Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science, where the senior year is spent mostly at WPI.
Sponsors for Innovation Month include Worcester Public Schools, Abbott Laboratories, EMC Corp., Intel Corp., UMass Medical School, Central Massachusetts STEM Pipeline Network, Quinsigamond Community College, WPI, EcoTarium and the Colleges of Worcester Consortium.
The biggest ovation this morning was for Natick resident Max Wallack, who won a Design Squad "Trash to Treasure" national competition. He won the award for designing a structure made out of grocery bags, shipping peanuts and wire that resembles a geodesic dome and serves as shelter for homeless people. He won $10,000 in cash, a laptop computer and a trip to a company that helped him build his design.
"My inventions go way back," said Wallack, who is 12 and a student at Marlborough's Advanced Math and Science Academy. His other inventions include a three-legged stool that also serves as a walker.
Students lined up to ask questions about how he came up with the different inventions and to ask Palumbo about his experiences on the television show.
"It's neat to see kids fired up about engineering," Palumbo said after the assembly ended. "You don't see that too often."
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