August 2018 NY Tech Meetup

ARRIVAL INSTRUCTIONSWhen you arrive at the American Museum of Natural History, head to 77th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Take one of the ramps on the side to the entrance. Once you enter the museum you will be directed by one of the staff/volunteers toward Kaufmann Theater where the event is taking place. Join us for New York City’s most famous and longest-running monthly tech event! This month we have partnered with the American Museum of Natural History’s BridgeUp: STEM program to bring you a showcase of amazing solutions built during the Hack the Deep hackathon that took place earlier this year on the weekend of February 9–11. Over 127 developers, alongside 30 high school students and four teachers, worked over a 24-hour period to build solutions for challenges posed by Museum scientists and researchers.The challenges’ areas of research included minuscule protists, the diversity of marine life in museum collections, the physical processes of ocean currents and eddies, and climate. The challenges were:1. Untold Stories of Women in Science: Help us tell the world about the prominent female scientists and explorers who chronicled natural history for the Museum by creating compelling interactive narratives and visualizations of stories, imagery, and data from AMNH.2. Iron Out the Kinks: Create tools to automate rendering 3D models of marine microbes from 2D cross-sections.3. The Eye of Maria: Create animations and interactive tools to understand the motion of sailing objects in the vicinity of a hurricane.4. Map the Collections: Georeference collections specimens to visualize expeditions and ecosystems in space and time. The program will include presentations from:High School Hackathon ProjectsProfessional Participant Hackathon Projects BridgeUP:STEM Internship Projects -Let’s Go LIGOA simulation of the migration of stellar black holes (sBHs) in an analytically modeled AGN disk using an augmented N-body code. Cons”R”vationA land cover change map of Kalina in the Solomon Islands as part of a study on the environmental factors influencing Herpetogramma hipponalis destruction of the sweet potato staple crop. Virus HuntingA pipeline to compute the GC percentage of genomic DNA sequences in order to identify viral sequences in the genome of the green alga Cymbomonas tetramitiformis. Neighborhood Plot PartyAn interactive, three-dimensional map of the solar neighborhood, focusing on nearby low-mass stars with known exoplanets Arrive at 6:30 pmProgram starts at 7:00 pmCommunity Ask & Offer and Networking Reception to follow the program! The Museum’s BridgeUP: STEM hackathon is a conduit for citizen science where our public participants create real tools and build solutions to real problems in scientific education, communication, and research.About BridgeUP: STEMBridgeUP: STEM is an ambitious initiative designed to bridge the gender and opportunity gaps in computational science for girls and young women as well as boys and girls from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Hosted at the Museum through generous support from the Helen Gurley Brown Revocable Trust, BridgeUP: STEM has developed a distinct identity in the landscape of computer science education by embedding programming in the context of scientific research and communication to support participants’ college and career goals.