Step IT Up America Comes to Detroit

UST Global is an information technology solutions firm based out of California that is crossing state lines to help educate minority women about STEM in major cities across the country. The company’s CEO, Sajan Pillai, saw that children living in inner cities in California are at a disadvantage when it comes to STEM education. Young minority women are even less likely to have opportunities to learn about technology. As adults women make up half of the population, yet are distinctly outnumbered in the IT field. Step IT Up America was born as a way to bridge this gap by providing a path to education and employment in the IT field for minority women.

U of M Researchers Create Innovative Nuclear Radiation Detector

Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have released a prototype of the “Polaris-H”, a radiation detector that not only works faster than its predecessors, but is also less expensive. The detector is actually a camera that sets a gamma-ray map over the view of the room. This lets users see radiation, at least on the screen. Unlike older versions of radiation detectors, this device can function at room temperature and be left alone to pick up information. The data on radiation is then stored to a USB drive, which can be inserted into a computer to analyze later. Previous methods of collecting radiation data could take weeks, but the “Polaris-H” can get the job done in half an hour. This commercialized innovation is already at work at NASA and the Department of Defense, besides, of course, nuclear power plants.