Fall 2026 Schedule

We look forward to welcoming the Fall 2026 cohort of middle school students to CMU's campus Thursday evenings, 6:00–7:30 p.m., Sept. 24 – Oct 29. Meeting dates and weekly projects are as follows:

Sept. 24 – Distributed Systems and Data Storage: Every time you send a message, watch a video, or like a post, many computers may be working together behind the scenes. In this TechNights session, you will explore how distributed systems divide up work, communicate, and receive an introduction to the processes that ensure the system continues to run even when a server stops functioning.

Oct. 1 –Probability, Randomness, and Cryptography: Have you ever wondered about the invisible forces that govern the results we get when we roll a die or flip a coin? Or how people secure information? In this TechNights session, we’ll cover probability, expectation, and distributions, and how they relate to cryptography.

Oct. 8 – Recommendation Algorithms: In this session, students will explore how recommendation algorithms work through a hands-on, device-free activity. Using their own preferences, they’ll learn how computers turn information into features, compare similarities between users, and use those similarities to make predictions and recommendations. Students will also test how well their own “algorithm” works and discuss why recommendation systems can sometimes be inaccurate or biased.

Oct. 15 – No Meeting: CMU Fall Break

Oct. 22 –DNA Origami: This session on DNA origami will cover how computational biologists use 2D and 3D modeling tools to design DNA structures for physical applications rather than genetic information, as conventionally known. Students will learn about DNA’s fascinating properties and bonding rules through hands-on activities, participate in a modeling software demo, and visualize how 2D structures can turn into 3D structures. This class will teach biology from a new perspective and offer a lot of hands-on crafting time for students!

Oct. 29 – Central Dogma of Molecular Biology: How does a cell turn the instructions in its DNA into the proteins that keep it running? Building on last week's topic, this session explores how a cell's genetic blueprint is used to build functional proteins that shape how cells work. Through hands-on activities, students will learn the jobs of essential enzymes, ribosomes and RNA polymerase. Along the way, students will also see applications of computation within biology.