Austin Rath

“Over the years we’ve done a lot of stuff [in STEM]. This year specifically has been kind of rigorous. I’m actually working on developing an app for the nature park and an LED board. The LED board will be portable and will be a cool thing we can have around. The app is a bird guide. You’ll be able to see all the birds that you can find in the nature park. You can see a picture of them, you can see a fact about them and you can hear some audio from them. That’ll be available to the public. Right now we’re closing up on it, we just need to figure out how to get the audio to work because this’ll be a live update app. They’ll be able to control exactly what’s put on it. It’ll be connected to an external database, so they won’t have to update the app every time. If they want to change something, they can just update the database and it’ll automatically update the app.

“I’m majoring in electrical computer engineering, and I just like learning that kind of stuff. The end goal is always nice, it feels good to get something done, but there’s a lot of things you learn on the way. Before I got started with these two projects, I would’ve had no idea to tell you how to make them. That’s the cool thing, you know you learn as you go. When you face problems, you look them up, you research them and go from there. There’s also the process of getting through problems because you’re going to have problems. That’s what I love about STEM. Just creating new things with technology is really interesting.”