STEM ACtivists
Formerly STEM Ambassadors
The STEM Action Center is looking for junior high, high school and college students who have a passion for STEM and would like to volunteer to serve K-12 students and educators throughout the state of Utah. STEM ACtivists can volunteer their time in various capacities, including:
- Planning and executing STEM-related events
- Informing educators of STEM opportunities and encouraging participation
- Strategizing and launching methods to increase student STEM engagement
- Teaching hands-on STEM lessons in the classroom and at events
Some of the many benefits of volunteering include
- Bolster your résumé, and receive a glowing recommendation from the STEM Action Center team whenever you need a reference
- Receive a certificate of completion signed by Governor Spencer J. Cox and Dr. Tamara Goetz, Utah STEM Action Center’s Director
- Hone your communication skills and build your network by exhibiting at and attending various events.
For more information about the STEM ACtivists contact Gina Muhlestein at gmuhlestein@utah.gov.
Meet Past STEM ACtivists
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Anly Lockwood
Anly Lockwood is a student at Park City High School. She is member of Girls of Who Code, a competitor in Utah Mathcounts, and a teaching assistant in Park City High math classes. She is Founder and Coordinator for Woke Words, a reading and writing series for women and non-binary persons of color. She is also a lead singer for Little Big Band, a touring jazz band of the Caleb Chapman Soundhouse, and has performed at the Telluride and Peaks jazz festivals. Anly is passionate about bringing more women into STEM through education and outreach. Anly is particularly focused on efforts to encourage women to pursue the study of her favorite subject, physics, the area of STEM in which women are most unrepresented.
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Emily Hyer
Emily Hyer is a first-generation undergraduate student at Utah Valley University majoring in Biology. Her favorite subjects within biology are ecology, animal behavior, parasitology, genetics, ornithology, and vertebrate and invertebrate zoology. She worked at Hogle Zoo in the Education Department and gained experience in helping her community understand topics such as climate change, ocean acidification, and sustainable lifestyles. She is a National Science Foundation S-STEM scholar at UVU where she carries out research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Her passion for biology is something she loves to talk about and share with others to help them get excited about science too.
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Grace Mead
Grace is a student at Corner Canyon High School. Since 2018 she has been promoting her platform Bright Futures Begin With STEM, involving advocacy for STEM education, particularly with young girls. She is striving to raise awareness about the importance of getting girls interested in STEM-related topics at a young age and the career options that are available in these important fields. Grace’s long-term vision is to become a Biomedical Engineer, specializing in prosthetics.
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Alexandra Buscher
Alexandra Buscher is a mechanical engineer from Houston, Texas, and moved up to Utah to work as a manufacturing engineer for Stryker Neurovascular in Salt Lake City. In college at Texas A&M University, she was a student-athlete for the women’s swim team and a member of the Zachry Leadership Program. She’s extremely passionate about using engineering and providing necessary resources to help serve people both globally and locally.
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Anastasia Dunca
Anastasia is a junior at West High School who thoroughly enjoys participating in STEM extracurriculars such as robotics club, science fair, HOSA, and SheTech. Prominently, she has participated in robotics for four years and is a software captain of two teams, one of which is an all-girls team. She also works at CodeNinjas where she teaches kids the basics of game and app development. She believes in the recruitment of more girls into engineering fields to minimize the gender gap in male-dominated STEM fields.
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Casidee Thompson
Casidee is an Environmental and Sustainability Studies Major at the University of Utah. Her focus of study at the U is on air and water quality as well as their implications for human health.
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Clifton Taylor
Clifton Taylor is currently the STEM and PE Specialist at Amelia Earhart Elementary School in Provo, UT. He loves working with the youth and teachers to show them how STEM relates to almost everything that we do! He is currently an EMT, going to school to get his paramedic certification, with a future goal of becoming a licensed nurse. He loves the medical field and learning about how the body works and recovers from injuries and illnesses. He has a goal of becoming a flight medic or nurse and on the side working with youth and teachers.
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Danny Bae
Donghwi (Danny) is currently earning his Ph.D. in cell biology at the University of Utah. His love of biomedical science started when he first learned about the Eustachian tube and an important role it plays in the auditory system. During his undergraduate degree in biology, he fell in love with scientific research in cell biology and decided to pursue a Ph.D. in it to do more research and gain more understanding of how biological systems work. After his graduation, he plans to continue to do his research in biology and inspire other students to join the effort.
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Daphne Liu
She founded the Girls Who Code club at West High school in hopes to provide a sisterhood community and help expose girls to computer science. As the president of West’s Science Fair Club, she actively advocates and mentors her peers to succeed at the University of Utah Science & Engineering Fair. Daphne has been selected as 1 of 40 national winners of the 2019 National Center for Women & Information Technology Aspirations in Computing Award because of her scientific research achievements and leadership potential. Besides her STEM interests, Daphne strives to minimize the gender gap in computing.
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Gary Zhan
Gary is currently a senior at Logan High School. He has actively been conducting research on sustainable agricultural technologies during his high school years, His research has won 3rd prize (2021) and a special award (2019) at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). He was selected as a MIT Research Science Institute (RSI) Scholar in 2021. Gary is President of Logan High STEM Club that focuses on sparking students' interest in science and encouraging their participation in science fairs. In 2019, he established the Utah Branch of OpportunityX, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing science research opportunities to underrepresented groups, and has been serving as Director since then. Gary is also actively promoting STEM awareness in younger students by running a STEM program and teaching hands-on experiments at a local charter school. Gary is excited to work with Utah STEM Action Center to promote STEM education and activities in Utah.
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Jean Yoo
Jean is a student at West High School. She has competed in numerous math competitions and is a member of Mission Math, a local non-profit organization devoted to inspiring a love for STEM, especially maths, for elementary and middle schoolers. Jean has also been a part of West High School’s Science Olympiad team since 8th grade, placing in the top 5 every year at the state competition. She is particularly interested in machine learning, her astronomy event in Science Olympiad, and is planning to begin studying applications of machine learning to astrophysics this year.
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Joseph Furniss
Joseph Furniss is a student at Utah Valley University. He is a National Science Foundation S-STEM Scholar majoring in Biology. After finishing his Bachelor’s Degree he is hoping to go to medical school. He hopes this will help him work with underserved populations here in the United States and around the world. He loves interacting with people of all backgrounds and is excited about all the opportunities science has to offer, both to unite people and move humankind forward.
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Layne Wells
Layne Wells works with the Cardiovascular Genetics team at Primary Children’s Hospital as a Genetic Counseling Assistant. She recently completed her undergraduate work at Scripps College in Claremont, CA, where she studied Neuroscience. She has served as an international medical shadow and translator, photo correspondent, lab instructor, and Expecting Health intern at a non-profit organization. A nominated member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society, Layne serves as a mentor and poster judge for young students with an interest in science. She is passionate about promoting equity in science and creating STEM materials that are engaging, empowering, and accessible.
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Maria Zaitsev
Maria is a senior at West High School. She and fellow ambassador Daphne Liu introduced Girls Who Code to their school, running the club throughout the school year. She holds a leadership position in her local HOSA chapter, having placed first at the 2019 International HOSA Conference in Researched Persuasive Writing and Speaking and top ten in the Health Care Issues Exam, after placing first in both events at the State level. Her love for research in science led her to spend the summer volunteering at the Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute at the University of Utah.
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Mariyam Shareef
Mariyam has worked professionally in IT for 8+years as a Database Engineer and Cloud Engineer and Security/ Audit Lead. She is also socially active with the Utah Refugee.org community, where she’s provided classes through the Girls Who Code project to girls from ages 14-18. She is also a speaker at Girls Who Code where she’s provided sessions on empowerment for 40+ girls in 5 different locations. She’s been part of this Utah refugee club since 2017.
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Mercy Smith
Mercy is a student at Timpview High School. She loves science and technology, particularly the natural sciences, and she hopes to become a microbiologist or environmental scientist sometime in the future. She wants to learn as much about STEM as possible while she’s still in high school, largely because it is so interesting, but also because she thinks that it will be through STEM fields that we will be able to solve current problems such as climate change and sustainable development. She participates in several STEM clubs at her high school (Science Bowl, Stem Club, Math club) and is currently taking advanced math and science courses.
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Miranda Jones
Miranda Jones is an undergraduate student at the University of Utah studying for her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with Honors. Her area of personal research is in Cultural Psychology, specifically factors impacting the health of indigenous peoples in the United States of America. Miranda volunteers at the Utah AIDS Foundation, Utah Pride Center, and Edible Campus Gardens. It is important to Miranda that her volunteer work is rooted in organizations that strive toward equality in healthcare, education, and food security.
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Narine Ishhanov
Narine was born in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. She graduated in 2018 with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Chemistry. Narine is currently a CEO of a national transportation services trucking company, KTI Transportation INC. As an Ambassador for the STEM Action Center, her goal is to inspire kids, especially young immigrant girls, to pursue an education and career in the STEM field. Narine is determined to complete her goal by becoming a dentist like her grandfather. She is grateful for the opportunities she’s had with pursuing an education in the science field.
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Rebecca McGregor
Rebecca McGregor is a student at Wasatch High School in Heber City. She is involved in the CAPS (Center for Advanced Professional Studies) where she is a member of the CAPS student leadership team. With CAPS Rebecca is part of a field project surveying micro invertebrates on the middle Provo River. During the summer she helped build her high school’s aquaponics greenhouse. She would like to earn a Ph.D. in Marine Biology and study migration patterns of Arctic Animals.
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Tarun Martheswaran
Tarun is a student at the Waterford School in Sandy. He is the president of an organization called Mission Math that raises funds for STEM organizations in Utah. He loves doing research and competing in math competitions. He has qualified for the AIME on several occasions, and recently took a trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). In his free time, Tarun often teaches math concepts to younger students.
Other STEM ACtivists
Aaron Anderson
Abhiijith Harikumaar
Addison Dawne Hansen
Courtney Cookson
Eric Tokita
Erin Paulsen
Isaak Grettum
Joshua Rodrigue
Logan Battrell
Marissa Higbee
Micaela Purdin
Sasha Singh
Spencer Elkington
Stephanie Quick
Tarsa Emily
