Pace’s SWAG participants showcase water robots

A water robot.

A fall semester of designing, engineering, constructing and hack-proofing water robots concluded with a showcase this weekend featuring presentations from 30 high school girls who participated in the workshop at Pace University.

Called STEM Women Achieve Greatness, or SWAG, the nine-week program enlisted girls interested in science, technology, engineering and math from high schools in Westchester and Fairfield counties to work with faculty from Pace’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

During the course of the program, the students were split into groups to develop a remote-controlled device, part of a SeaPerch robot kit, that could securely collect data, such as water temperatures.

At the Dec. 12 showcase, each team presented their projects, followed by a panel discussion including female leaders and executives in STEM industries. The panel included: Ursuline Foley, CIO Corp. & Enterprise Enablement, XL Catlin; Margaret Honey, president and CEO of the New York Hall of Science; Nasrin Rezai, CIO at GE Capital; and Judy Spitz, CIO at Verizon.

GE Capital, the financial services unit of Fairfield-based conglomerate GE, sponsored and collaborated with Pace to offer the workshop.