Regions

KAST Illinois

ABOUT

Vivian Jin first heard about KAST through a friend operating in KAST Maryland. She believed the organization’s mission was incredibly applicable to schools in the Chicagoland area and soon set off to implement it at her college. Based at the University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC), Vivian recruited a strong team (David Zhang, Anna Liu, Raghu Somala, and Venkat Atluri) to help found the KAST Illinois chapter and become an official student organization in August of 2016. Since then, the UIC chapter has 35+ active volunteers teaching at three elementary schools, and were also nominated at the end of the Spring Semester for “Best New Student Organization”. KAST Illinois is looking to reach out to additional schools in hopes of inspiring more kids in underserved areas of Chicago to become interested in STEM fields through fun and engaging ways.

START DATE

02/05/2016

PROJECT PLAN

Expand to more elementary schools, launch a KAST Illinois Summer program in a local library, finalize a solid lesson plan curriculum, encourage students to explore their curiosities in STEM

GET IN TOUCH

Interested and want to learn more? Want to start a KAST branch of your own? Have a random question you want answered? Email us at info@kidsarescientiststoo.org.

Branch Leaders

Nikith Branch Leader

Haarisudhan Sureshkumar

University of Illinois at Chicago

Haari is studying Bioengineering on the Pre-Med track at UIC and is currently a junior with the goal of graduating in Spring 2022, He first became involved with KAST during his freshman year of college and is now co-president of the KAST UIC chapter. His favorite memory is making marshmallow catapults with the kids to learn projectile motion!

Haari Branch Leader

Nikith Erukulla

University of Illinois at Chicago

Nikith is currently aiming to graduate from UIC in Spring 2022 with a Bioengineering degree while on the Pre-Med track. He became involved with KAST his freshman year at UIC and has since become co-president of his chapter. One of his favorite memories with KAST is when he got to make a wind powered car out of paper and straws and race it against the other kids who were there!