Nick Barbi de Palm Aire is not afraid to ask “stupid questions”.
“When you are not necessarily an expert, but you feel that something makes sense and that you start talking to people, you are going to embarrass once or another,” he said, “but that’s why you need others.”
Barbi has built a non -profit organization for this feeling.
Science and Technology Society works with people like the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because Barbi’s “superpower” takes ideas and brings them to experts to make them. He has never been a requirement that he knows the expert.
STS uses NASA technologies during workshops offer to local students. Barbi is currently working on the promotion of the club on his website.
He also made a link with a high school in Hawaii via NASA which wants spectrometers but does not have funding.
The spectrometers measure the light. NASA offers instructions on how to do them, but even a simple house costs around $ 200 to assemble.
Barbi’s goal is to do twice as much as they need STS workshops and ship the leftovers to Hawaii, but it will cost a little more.
Since establishing STS in 2022, Barbi has never organized fundraising. There are around 50 members who pay annual contributions. General membership costs $ 50 per year, and family membership costs $ 75 per year.
Barbi also created Mary Jo Barbi Steam Education and Scholarship Fund, which helps finance education programs.
But three years later, Barbi is ready to launch an annual event to extend the scope of the club. His summer will be spent a collection of music focused on music, not a gala.
“This is not the type of thing you wear a tuxedo – the one where you get good music and people pay more than they should for food,” said Barbi.
Nick Barbi, founder of Science and Technology Society, has one of the spectrometers made by students.
Currently, the club depends on the kindness of partnerships, it is therefore looking for additional funding and volunteers to propel STs at the next level.
That said, Barbi has established several solid partnerships in a few years. The University of Florida of the South and the Faulhaber Fab Lab of Suncoast Science Center provided a meeting space, students and ideas in STS.
So what’s for members?
Members have curious and curious individuals with whom to socialize regularly. STS holds monthly rallies in different places in the counties of Sarasota and Lamantin.
STS also hosts speakers. The old speakers include Steve Davis with the Everglades Foundation, Charlie Hunsicker with the natural resources of the county of Manatee and Rob Brady with Robrady Design.
In the future, there will be three seminar tracks: science and the environment, artificial intelligence and health and medical sciences. Each track will offer three seminars per year, so Barbi is looking for volunteers to direct each track.
STS offers a lot of volunteer opportunities to its members.
The club offers judges for local robotics competitions, the Sarasota Stem Fair, the scientific fair of the Lakewood Ranch Preparatory Academy and the RC Custom Car of the Fab Lab.
Members can help create and manage student workshops, and those with science and technology training can supervise students. However, mentoring requires a much greater commitment of time.
Barbi also noted that all the students involved are exceptional. Some are star students, but that is not the point of STS. The essential objective is to simply engage people with science and technology, which does not depend on any level of understanding.
Curiosity and interest are the only requirements to become a member.
To arouse more interest from students, STS will explore portable technology next year. Member Timothy Mastroianni wrote three books on the subject, so Barbi will draw from his history for expertise and contacts.
STS is based on experts as a source of technology understanding. In this case, Mastroianni will guide the type of sensor and software they use.
The final objective is to illustrate how artificial intelligence can improve human performance. The sensors are placed on the muscles and the software is examined how muscles and joints move.
For example, the software could detect that the wrist of a launcher moves too early in a launch movement, so that the launcher is invited to delay this movement.
“There is so much science, so much data, so many available techniques that we need people understand more,” said Barbi. “We must become more aware of science in our lives and understand how to get real information.”