Fun with the Maryland STEM Festival

Fun with the Maryland STEM Festival is a practical, community-minded interview show centered on STEM people in Maryland and nearby institutions. Each episode usually begins with a guest’s current role, then works backward through education, early curiosity, mentors, setbacks, and surprising turns. The pace is conversational and uncomplicated. It favors clear answers over production gloss. Recent guests include computer and systems engineers, construction project engineers, cybersecurity professionals, educators, federal IT leaders, Navy-connected technologists, and organizers building student programs. The show is especially strong when it lets STEM sound ordinary in the best sense: people coordinating with teams, reviewing curriculum, managing risk, troubleshooting laptops, building secure systems, flying test hardware, or helping students see a field they had not considered. Career routes are treated with welcome specificity. Alina Momin talks about tinkering, a gap year, a robotics startup, UMBC, and work at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Ashley Purcella connects buildings, civil engineering, construction sites, STEM for Her, and ballet. Maria Roat traces IT leadership through government, Navy experience, cybersecurity, policy, and travel to Antarctica. Erin Sutton brings mechanical design, the Dragonfly mission, test flights near APL, a motorcycle-part patent, and Turkish into the same career story. Other episodes move through ReadyForCyber, SAIC, Champs Camp, MAP Technologies, Project Jammie, Naval STEM, and student-facing outreach. The show’s educational value comes from its accumulation of examples. It does not reduce STEM to slogans. It shows how many doorways exist: internships, military training, classrooms, nonprofits, scholarships, co-ops, hobbies, and local events. Festival updates and announcements keep the series tied to Maryland STEM activity.