BOSTON (CBS) — A new report using information from the U.S. Department of Education has ranked the best high schools in the state. According to Niche’s list of the 2019 best public high schools, Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science in Worcester ranked as the best public high school in the state. Check out the full list here
WORCESTER, MA, November 18, 2019 – The Mass Academy of Math and Science at WPI was listed at No. 10 among the top 5,000 STEM high schools for 2019 per rankings by Newsweek and STEM.org, honoring excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. For the full article click here.
In addition to being accepted at some of the most prestigious universities in the world including WPI, MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth, and Yale, Mass Academy students are regularly at the forefront of regional, state, national, and international competitions and exhibitions. Students have also been honored in the Boston Globe Scholastic Art and Writing Contest, the Massachusetts All-State Band, and the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, among others. Check out the links below to learn about some of their recent accomplishments.
CyberPatriot XIII
CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program created by the Air Force Association to inspire K-12 students toward careers in cybersecurity or other STEM disciplines. At the center of CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition. The competition puts teams of high school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. In the rounds of competition, teams are given a set of virtual images that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services in a six hour period. Students need to utilize their knowledge of networking, switches, routers, firewalls, TCP/IP protocols and architecture, and administration of various operating systems. They have to determine whether there are unauthorized users getting into the network, whether their passwords are strong enough or whether the firewall has holes in it. For every problem they identify and fix, points are awarded; however, points are deducted if there is a disruption to required services.
This season, Mass Academy had 30 students compete in CyberPatriot XIII. In all, over 4,800 teams registered to compete. All teams excelled in the competition rounds, demonstrating teamwork, critical thinking skills, and technical knowledge key to a successful career in cybersecurity. I was very impressed with the determination and persistence that all students showed uncovering and fixing vulnerabilities. All teams did a great job working together and putting in their best efforts, despite the challenges of the ongoing pandemic.
Please join me in congratulating the following Mass Academy teams who received MA State Awards and Tier Awards in their respective tiers:
2nd Place State Award – Platinum Tier – Team Blue #13-3821 consisting of Ian Grzembski, Darshan Krishnaswamy, Alec Miller, Alexander Sun, Andrew Yang, and Akhilesh Yarlagadda
2nd Place Tier Award – Gold Tier – Team Orange #13-3818 consisting of Annalisa Allan, Hazelyn Aroian, William Babincsak, Ryan Dillon, Anaya Kaul, and Amrita Thirumalai
3rd Place Tier Award – Gold Tier – Team Green #13-3820 consisting of Ronit Avadhuta, Jon Cili, Andrew Lee, Shreya Majumdar, Katy Stuparu, and Ansh Tripathi
To see the final results of all teams, click here.
To see the final results of all State Awards, click here.
We hope you all had a great CyberPatriot season, and enjoyed working together learning more about Cybersecurity.
Providence College 34th HS Programming Contest
A team of Mass Academy students consisting of senior Alex Nedelescu, junior Neil Kale, junior Darshan Krishnaswamy, and junior Toyesh Jayaswal took home first place in the Providence College 34th annual High School Programming Competition held on Tuesday, March 10th, 2020.
The event is sponsored by the college’s chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Providence College’s programming competition requires teams of students to work together to solve a set of challenging problems. The team solving the highest number of problems wins and in the case of a tie, the team taking the least accumulated time wins.
Mass Academy Senior Wins 2019 Congressional App Challenge
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WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) announced the winner of the 2019 Congressional App Challenge from Massachusetts’ Second Congressional District: Andrew Youssef. Andrew is enrolled in the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The student’s app, SafeSound, aims to safeguard against noise-induced hearing loss by creating a safer listening experience for headphone users. Utilizing algorithms Andrew wrote, the app instantaneously reduces sound intensity to a safe threshold without jeopardizing the original audio’s sound quality. “I am excited to congratulate Andrew on his exceptional app.” said Congressman McGovern. “Programs like the Congressional App Challenge help today’s students develop the skills they need to become the inventors and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. I look forward to following Andrew’s hard work in the years to come, and I congratulate him on behalf of our entire community. The award announcement can be found here. “The curriculum at Mass Academy is geared toward project-based learning, and encourages students to apply their knowledge to solve real world problems. We are extremely proud of all our students, and are thankful for the support from our legislators, which helps provide these opportunities to allow our students to excel and showcase their work,” said Michael Barney, Director of Mass Academy of Math and Science. BACKGROUND ON THE CONGRESSIONAL APP CHALLENGE: The Congressional App Challenge highlights the value of computer science and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and encourages students to engage in these fields. By recognizing our nation’s young programming talent, Congress hopes to shine a light on the growing importance of these skills. The Challenge is open to all U.S. high school students in participating districts. Challenge participants are invited, either as individuals or as teams of up to four, to create and submit their own software application (“app”) for mobile, tablet, or other computing devices on a platform of their choice. A panel of local computer science professionals and congressional representatives will judge the apps, and the winners in each district will have the honor of being recognized by their Congressional representative. The Challenge is coordinated by the Congressional Internet Caucus and the non-governmental sponsor of the project, the Internet Education Foundation. Click here to read more about the Congressional App Challenge. |
Community Service 2020-2021
Mass Academy of Math and Science at WPI believes in giving back to the community. During the 2020-2021 school year, Mass Academy students completed more than 5,000 hours of community service. Students engaged in both local and global initiatives, with the greatest impact right here in the Worcester area. Examples include volunteering at food pantries, tutoring local elementary and middle school students, supporting out-of-school time programming, playing games or visiting with elderly citizens, photographing fading gravestones as part of a historical preservation effort, and assisting individuals with disabilities with daily activities.
Broad Institute
Sreshtaa Rajesh, Class of 2019, recently completed a program in the computational epigenomics lab at Broad Institute. As she reports, “We were focused on histones–proteins that DNA is wound around. Changes to the chemical composition of these histones can change the accessibility of the DNA around it, altering gene expression. The data that we got aimed to map the frequency of certain histone modifications along the genome, however we were only interested in the regions that had elevated levels. Over the last year, my lab had developed an algorithm that aimed to parse through the data and differentiate background (the normal distribution of the data) from the signal (the areas with elevated levels of histone modifications, therefore the areas that were of interest).
The algorithm was tested and validated on Broad-Institute generated data, but before it could be implemented and introduced to the scientific community, it needed to be validated on non-Broad generated data (because each lab will introduce its own bias into data). I imported non-Broad datasets, adapted the algorithm for use on them, and performed visual and quantitative analyses. Statistical results between each labs’ data came back insignificant, suggesting that the algorithm does not perform significantly differently when introduced to different biases. These results are promising in not only validating the algorithm, but for developing a better fit-quality metric that can give us an accurate, quantitative way of analyzing how well the algorithm works on future datasets. “
Mass Academy of Math and Science holds Teacher Appreciation Day
On Wednesday, Nov. 20, Juniors at the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science at WPI expressed their appreciation to teachers who have made a difference in their lives at the annual Mass Academy Teacher Appreciation Day.
Teachers from 27 schools across Massachusetts were honored for their contributions to their students’ success. Each student welcomed their honored guest to the Academy, gave them a tour of their “new” school, introduced them to their classmates and Academy teachers, and shared lunch. They had a chance to reminisce, catch up on what is happening at their sending school, and say thank you for preparing them for success.