by This week has seen Math4Science reach an important milestone: we are now officially on our way to incorporating as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. Last week we met with attorneys from the firm of O’Melveny and Myers, who are helping us with our incorporation at no cost, thanks to the helpful assistance of NYLPI, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Special thanks goes to Jessica Lauredan of NYLPI for arranging and facilitating this exciting relationship.
Soon we will begin the incorporation process, which we hear should not take long at all. As a corporation, we will then write bylaws, form both a Board of Directors and an Advisory Board, and organize our corporate governance. We will also file with the IRS for 501 (c)(3) non-profit status, which will enable us to raise the funds we need to scale Math4Science up to the broad platform we want it to occupy.
We also continue to build our important bank of scientist interviews and profiles. This week, we spoke with Haroon Malak, an X-ray crystallographer working for Mars (the company that makes M&Ms, among other famous foods) as a Radiation Safety Officer. Malak told us about some of the ways X-ray crystallographers explore the structure of molecules and how much fun it can be to work with the chemistry of chocolate.
Julia Lintern, an Aerospace Reliability Engineer at JetBlue, told us about some of the amazing work mechanical engineers do to make it safe to fly. She uses probability to help predict how well different parts of airplanes will perform in the future. Lintern, a trained fashion designer as well as an aerospace engineer, explained to Math4Science how she has used scale factors and similar triangles to design custom-sized clothes.
One more accomplishment during this busy week: we have begun to contact potential candidates for our Board of Directors. We are looking for directors who offer a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, skills, and contacts, from non-profit management to education policy to accounting to finance to parenting and more. We are confident that M4S’s strong conceptual framework, combined with the obvious need for an improved approach to American science and math education, will attract notably qualified candidates looking to serve the public.
