This past summer, Palmetto High senior Michael Foos participated in the University of Florida’s Student Science Training Program. During the seven-week program, he conducted independent lab research alongside post-doctoral fellows and graduate students in the Mechanical & Aerospace Labs at the university. At the end, he wrote a research paper.
“This experience was amazing because it gave me the opportunity to take the knowledge I’ve accumulated throughout high school and apply it to real world problems and scenarios under the guidance of professionals in the field,” he says. It truly gave me an insight into what engineering really is and convinced me that I wanted to pursue a career in the field.”
At Palmetto, he’s president of the Asian Culture Club. He says the club helps educate the school on Asian culture and activities.
“We also welcome foreign exchange students and celebrate multi-ethnicities,” he says. “We do the Chinese new festival at Miami-Dade College. I’ve been doing that since freshman year.”
He organizes the club’s participation for the Chinese Festival and he organizes all the other activities the club participates in. He’s a member of the Japanese National Honor Society, a member of the Science National Honor Society and the National Honor Society. And he’s vice president for competitions for Mu Alpha Theta, the math honor society.
“That’s one of my biggest interests,” he says. “I’m very STEM based.”
He’s competed in several math competitions. So far, his best finish is fifth in the state in Calculus Integration.
In science, Foos was a member of the Palmetto team that took first place in the region and then went on to compete at the Kennedy Space Center in the Astronaut challenge. He was also in the Build It engineering competition hosted by the University of Miami.
“You travel with a team, and they give you a problem to solve and materials,” he says. “You have to design and build something. We did not win, but we did do fairly well.”
He found that competition creative. That one and the Astronaut Challenge fit right in with his goal of becoming a mechanical engineer and pursuing a career in aerospace.
His top five colleges are MIT, Yale, Stanford, Georgia Tech, and UC Berkeley.
Foos is captain of the varsity badminton team. He’s going into his fourth year and he devotes a lot of time to the sport.
“Every day after school I’ll practice for tow-three hours,” he says. “Sundays I’ll play five hours. I go to Shula’s Athletic Club on Thursday for four to five hours.”
By playing at the Athletic Club, he’s able to play against experienced players which raises his skills.
“Last year we actually won GMAC,” he says. “We are usually neck-and-neck with a few other schools. We have one of the best skilled teams in the district.”
Outside of school, Foos works as a tutor for Tutoring for Tomorrow, the program run by Palmetto students. While he earns money for tutoring, the program raises money for the school.
A couple of years ago, Foos, along with friends from middle school, started the first South Florida branch of the Alliance of Youth Leaders in the United States.
Through AYLUS Foos has done beach clean-ups, put on music shows at senior centers and donated books to schools.
“We’ve cleaned Matheson Hammock,” he says. “We go into the mangroves. We go to a few senior care centers in West Kendall. We have violinists, pianists, guitar players and others who show off their talent, like dancing.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
