• Sixteen-year-old Shawn Halimman of Dallas soldered pieces of a heart rate monitor he built during Explore Engineering Day at UT Dallas. The monitors built by high school students will be sent to a health clinic in Rwanda.

More than 2,000 school-age children and their parents attended hands-on workshops, lab tours and tech talks at this year’s annual Explore Engineering Day at The University of Texas at Dallas. The Feb. 15 event gave K-12 students opportunities to build drones, program robots, meet engineers and compete in Beyblades tournaments.

The Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science presented Explore Engineering Day with the Science and Engineering Education Center as part of the National Society of Professional Engineers’ annual Engineers Week (Feb. 16-22), which is designed to ensure a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by emphasizing the importance of learning math, science and technical skills.

“The purpose of Explore Engineering Day is to promote awareness among parents and students in local communities of the importance of an engineering education,” said Dr. D.T. Huynh, associate dean for administration and finance in the Jonsson School and professor of computer science. “The Jonsson School opens its doors to students nearby to explore how engineering and computer science creates innovation and entrepreneurship.”

The event was sponsored by ABB, Capital One Women in Tech, Fujitsu, The Home Depot Inc., State Farm, Texas Instruments Inc. and Wolters Kluwer.