Welcome

 Victoria Serrano started as a volunteer when she was still studying her PhD program in Electrical Engineering at Arizona State University. As part of the Micro-Air Vehicle Club, she showcased Lego Robots that attracted the attention of children and adults at the Discover-E Day, an activity that serves about 1500 students to promote engineering programs. Victoria also participated in outreach programs in Arizona and developed a curriculum for 5th-12th graders to learn how to build and program an Arduino Robot. This work impacted about 200 students in 2014-2016. She was also awarded an EPICS in IEEE grant in 2015 to develop an outreach program in Panama to motivate fifteen students from three different schools in David, Panama. This program was developed with the use of Lego-Mindstorms kits. After completing her PhD in 2016, she returned to Panama and won another grant from the IEEE CSS Outreach Fund to develop the second part of the EPICS’ program entitled “STEM Beyond the Borders”. This program had 20 participants from 4 different schools. They attended university’s classes for six weeks. At the end, some of the equipment was donated to participating schools that allowed them to participate in regional robotics competitions and scientific fairs. With the remaining equipment, Victoria organized free workshops in 2018 to let low-income university students learn about Arduino, 3D printing and circuit design. She also motivated students to showcase their projects at the state fair in Chiriqui in 2018 where they were exposed to about 600 people including children who would like to pursue an engineering program in the future. Finally, Victoria decided to create CIATEC (the acronym for Science, Art and Technology in Spanish) in 2019, a mobile center that allows children and teenagers to take robotics classes in different locations such as a public market and a catholic church.