It’s no secret that students at BSM achieve some pretty incredible things. This year, to showcase some of the great things done by students, the RED Expo will be hosted on May 19 at Benilde-St. Margaret’s in the Cube from 5-7, open to anyone.

The Research Entrepreneurship and Design, or RED Expo was set up by Anne Dougherty, Director of the Research Entrepreneurship and Design program at BSM. This was organized to show off some of the achievements students have accomplished this year at BSM. “So this year the RED Expo is really an opportunity for us to come together and celebrate the really amazing work that’s happened around the building. Because we’ve been virtual and we’ve been separated, there hasn’t been as much opportunity to sort of share and story tell our successes. So this is really just an opportunity to let some of this success shine,” Dougherty said.

Although RED is a class at BSM where students can spend the semester making a massive project come into fruition, this expo is for anyone with something worth showing. “We have students who are nominated in the SLIP program, in the Red Knights for Social Justice, the Bio-Med AP research projects, and also the Inventeam, the Robocup team, and the RED Capstones,” Dougherty said.

The RED Expo is also an opportunity to live out some of the events of last year that had been cancelled due to the pandemic. Events like Robocup are one of the most impressive things that the engineering department does. It is an international, predominantly collegiate, robotics competition. Opportunities like the RED Expo makes sure that the time put in by students all around the school from different areas of expertise doesn’t go to waste. “Also to replace some of the events we didn’t get to do, either in 2020 or 2021. For example the Robocup Rescue challenge has been virtual as well as the MIT Inventeam EurekaFest,” Dougherty said.

With the constraints of this year, students still managed to get tons of work done, making them the key inspiration for the start of this event. “I have spent a lot of the year really in awe. And I mean this authentically. I have been amazed at the work that has got done with the constraints we’ve been around, and I feel like I was the only person who got to see that. That really felt like something we wanted to share,” Dougherty said.

This event is inspired by the students and held for the students, as well as their families. “I’m excited to be able to see people’s families when they’re getting to see these projects for the first time,” Dougherty said. 

With this being the first trial of the event, changes are to be expected. “This feels like the beginning of something big…and as the engineers and RED students have learned, we iterate a lot, and the next version is going to be great too,” Dougherty said.