The 8th Edition of Student Day in Naples: Fostering Interest in STEM

The 8th edition of Student Day took place in Naples, an annual event that STMicroelectronics dedicates to high school students to help stimulate interest and choice towards STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Specifically, studying STEM helps young people develop the technical, digital, and cross-disciplinary skills essential for facing future challenges and for accessing job opportunities in sectors with a high demand for qualified professionals. In this context, STMicroelectronics' Student Day was born: a training and orientation initiative that has been renewed every year since 2017, also thanks to a virtuous model of collaboration between different actors in the Campania region's education ecosystem - high schools, companies, and universities - that continue to invest resources and ideas in the new generations of talent. More than 80 teachers and 400 students from 40 high schools participated in specific electronics courses with a 32-bit microcontroller that ST organized in recent months at its Naples site, specifically to provide teachers and students with the necessary knowledge to participate in the eighth edition of Student Day. The free initiative gathered the adherence of 11 schools and 20 teams of young developers accompanied by their teachers: at Student Day 2024, they presented their school and the electronic systems created thanks to the notions learned during the courses and their creative talent. All the projects presented by the teams were evaluated by some of the most authoritative professors of electronic engineering from the Universities of Campania and by representatives of selected local companies who participated in the analysis and comment sessions. A significant moment of the day was the Hackathon, a challenge for the teams through the use of a Nucleo board and an electronic components kit. A prize was awarded to the team from the Guglielmo Marconi Institute of Higher Education in Nocera Inferiore (Salerno) who completed the challenge first with the project 'Smart Food Monitoring & Control System', and to two teachers who demonstrated the greatest commitment in helping the participating teams.