Outreach

Tomoko Matsuo is a strong advocate for underrepresented minorities in science, engineering and mathematics. She is passionate about math and science education for girls and women of all backgrounds. Some of her outreach activities include:

  • , annual regional science fair for middle and high-school students. Tomoko and her undergraduate student mentored a student on research involving  for the 2021 BVSD Corden Pharma Science Fair. 

  • Remote Sensing Day, a one-day STEM summer camp program on remote sensing for high-school students as part of the . Tomoko and her graduate and undergraduate students spent a day at the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Mountain Research Station in the summer of 2019.

  • Remote Sensing Summer Camp, one-week STEM summer camp for first-generation precollegiate high-school students offered in collaboration with the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Science Discovery and Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement. Tomoko and ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ graduate students co-developed an outreach program composed of hands-on activities that traverse the entire arc of remote sensing and in-situ data collection, analysis, and modeling in the summer of 2018.

  • , to encourage 6th, 7th and 8th-grade girls to study math, science, and technology by allowing them to interact with women who use these disciplines in their careers. Tomoko has been presenting hands-on experiment workshops (e.g., liquid nitrogen experiments, electromagnetism experiments) at annual Expanding Your Horizons conferences at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ's engineering center from 2007 through 2014.

  • , to introduce science and 21st century skills by educating and mentoring underrepresented youth, using video and new media technology. Tomoko has participated in Earth Explorers' programs in 2012 and 2014 (Watch ).

 

Remote Sensing Day at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ's Mountain Research Station in 2019

Tomoko Matsuo working with two high school students.

Tomoko Matsuo at MRS

A comic in which a homely girl is mocking two popular girls for leaving her out, since there cannot be an in-crowd without someone to leave out. This comic is a joke explaining special social relativity.

What's New

She is launching a new summer STEM camp based on her graduate coursework to intorduce high-school students to remote sensing in collaboration with 

Would you believe that most of the world around us is invisible to humans? Did you know that bees can detect ultraviolet light, which allows them to see flower petal patterns that people can't? Did you know that some animals can even perceive heat as infrared light? In a similar way, scientists and engineers make special instruments for airplanes and satellites to track hurricanes, spot wildfires, predict the weather, and collect science data to learn about the environment. In this summer camp, you are going to build your own multispectral camera with a solar powered Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Learn about the invisible world, and go out and see part of it for yourself.

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