Idaho National Laboratory’s summer camps give students opportunities to learn how to solve real-world problems.
This summer, INL’s STEM Education team partnered with the lab’s Technology Deployment team to bring artificial intelligence (AI) into Nuclear Science Camp, part of the laboratory’s STEM Scholars program.
Using the STEM Ultra App Lab, students discovered that AI is more than a chatbot. They learned how thoughtful prompting can transform ideas into practical tools.
For more than a year, INL’s Technology Deployment team has been exploring ways AI can add efficiency to the process of commercializing INL technology and software. For example, the team is using AI to design apps that speed up their work.
Rather than keeping that expertise to themselves, team members adapted it into a series of prompts that students as young as middle schoolers can use to create useful apps supporting scientific discovery.
Students at the STEM camp used AI prompts to create an app that could help astronauts on a newly discovered planet identify materials they’ve never seen before and then determine if they are useful or dangerous. Other students used the prompts to create an educational game app that players use to build matter from atoms. Students input the prompts into a design platform called Figma to create the apps and were encouraged to try it at home.
Why teach middle schoolers to create apps using AI? By using AI, they learn how to use an emerging technology to tackle the kinds of complex problems researchers solve every day. When students see that AI and nuclear science are tools for discovery rather than abstract concepts, they begin to imagine themselves as the scientists, engineers and innovators who will solve tomorrow’s energy challenges.
That is the purpose of INL’s STEM Scholars Camps: connecting students with researchers, authentic science and hands-on learning experiences that spark curiosity, build confidence and strengthen the future STEM workforce. These activities also help fulfill INL Technology Deployment’s purpose: to translate innovation into impact and move laboratory technologies and software into the hands of industry, government and communities where they can make a difference.
