We are elated to announce our second class of College Scholarship recipients. Five students will receiving scholarships from BEAM, three with support from our partner Jane Street.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision severely limiting affirmative action in college admissions, BEAM’s work is more vital than ever.

Graduation season is an exciting time of year at BEAM, as the students we’ve known since middle school graduate and continue their incredible STEM journeys. This year, we introduce to you Zeñia Alarcon, who graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute this spring with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in management. This month, she is beginning her career as an assistant superintendent with a construction management company. Congratulations, Zeñia!

Lennin has always been deeply curious.

His curiosity led him to one of his first loves, chess, which he began playing in first grade. Lennin was all in, attending tournaments every weekend, taking classes before and after school, winning trophies, even flying to Dallas (his first time on a plane) to play in his first (of many) national tournament.

Curious about more math this Pi Day? Here’s the problem we included in this year’s Pi Day Card:

In this game, x starts at 0, and your goal is to make x as big as possible. You can apply the four rules below, but each rule costs you points, and you only have 100 points to spend. What's the biggest you can make x, and how do you do it?

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT PI?

Maybe you would say it’s a handy constant, helpful when trying to figure out a circumference or area. Maybe you’d say it’s irrational and transcendental. Maybe you’d say you know the first five digits, 3.1415 (or maybe you even know the first 10 or 15 or more). But whether you know the first 5 or the first 5000 digits, there are a lot of questions we can ask about the digits that make up pi. 

We could wonder about whether a specific string of digits (such as your birthday) exists somewhere in pi or even if all possible finite strings of digits appear somewhere in pi.