Outreach

K–12 and Community Outreach

I am committed to broadening participation in engineering and helping students from underrepresented communities engage with robotics and STEM at an early stage.
At Purdue University, I have been actively involved in several outreach activities:

• Lab tours and hands-on demonstrations
  Organized visits to the MARS Lab for middle- and high-school students from Indianapolis, IN and Kettering, OH. Activities included robot demos, simple perception experiments, and discussions on pathways into engineering.

• Purdue FIRST Programs
  Supported [Purdue FIRST Programs](https://www.purduefirst.org/) by giving lab tours and Q&A sessions for FRC and FTC teams, highlighting how concepts from competition robots connect to university-level research.

Minority Engineering & Pre-College Programs

I work closely with initiatives aimed at students from multi-ethnic and first-generation backgrounds:

• Minority Engineering Program (MEP)
  Participated in outreach events organized by the
  [Minority Engineering Program (MEP)](https://engineering.purdue.edu/MEP), sharing my experience as an international/first-generation researcher and discussing research opportunities in robotics and tactile sensing.

• Multi-Ethnic Introduction to Engineering (MITE)
  Delivered lab demonstrations and informal talks for students in the MITE summer program, introducing them to soft robotics, tactile sensing, and autonomous systems.

• Pre-Freshman and Cooperative Education (PREFACE)
  Contributed to activities for PREFACE participants, focusing on how fundamental physics and mathematics appear in robot design, sensing, and control.

Student Clubs and Mentoring

• Autonomous Robotics Club (ARC), Purdue
  Served as an advisor for the [Autonomous Robotics Club (ARC)](https://purduearc.com/), providing guidance on perception, manipulation, and system integration. Helped student teams connect their competition projects with research-level topics such as multimodal sensing and embodied intelligence.

• Individual mentoring
  Mentored undergraduate and master’s students from diverse backgrounds on research projects in tactile sensing, soft robotics, and underwater systems, with an emphasis on inclusive, hands-on learning and long-term growth.

If you are a student or educator interested in lab tours, demos, or collaborative outreach activities, feel free to contact me at sathar@purdue.edu.