S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Science and Technology

The S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Science and Technology (often abbreviated to Sci-Tech) was founded by S.H.I.E.L.D. and guided many of the world's best and brightest minds. It is a part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. Sci-Tech is the hardest of the Academies to gain admission to. Cadets are required to have at least one Ph.D to gain admission into the Sci-Tech.

Foundation
The S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Science and Technology was built in the buildings that housed the Strategic Scientific Reserve before S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded.

Over the next years, the cadets started to look for ways to escape the vigilance made by S.H.I.E.L.D. inside its own walls, and in the late 1960s, some cadets started to sneak into the Boiler Room of the Academy to hang out. As many ideas came out this room, the tradition continued

Over the years, the Academy student body have made many improvements on the room, transforming it into a club-like destination which includes music, a pool table and a full bar.

FitzSimmons' Student Years
Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons enrolled in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, and had many courses together, such as Chemical Kinetics taught by Franklin Hall, and becoming best friends over the time they spent at the Academy.

During their years at the Academy, many rumors were spread about a legendary S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, The Cavalry, and the stories about how she gained such a nickname were exaggerated over the years, although many students, including Fitz and Simmons, didn't know her real identity.

As the youngest students to enroll at the Academy, Fitz and Simmons were often the target of the traditional pranks carried out at the Academy to freshman students. One particularly well elaborated prank during their neurobiology course scared Fitz and Simmons and even led them to believe in the existence of telekinesis during their freshman year.

Fitz and Simmons grew fond of the pranks, considering them as an integral part of becoming a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent at the Academy, and regreted graduating three years earlier than expected as they never had the opportunity to pull a prank into another student.

Attack at the Swimming Pool
A group of students including Seth Dormer and Callie Hannigan went to the campus pool to have a distraction following a test. Donnie Gill, a withdrawn but brilliant student, was also at the pool trying to study in a quiet place, and was visibly disturbed by his fellow students.

Dormer jumped to the pool with another female student while Hannigan stayed out of it. As Dormer convinced Hannigan to undress and jump to the pool too, she witnessed how the water began to freeze, and prompted her friends to get out of the pool. As they thought Hannigan was simply worried about the consequences of being at the pool they didn't obey, but as they saw the ice approaching, they hurried to exit the pool, but the ice trapped Dormer's leg. Gill, who was leaving the pool, broke the ice and liberated Dormer's leg.

An internal investigation of the incident revealed it was caused by a device placed in the filter of the pool days before the incident.

Arrival at the Academy
Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons were summoned to the Academy in order to help with the investigation of the incident with the Atmospheric Moisture Freezing Device, as the device was created using some concepts created by them during their student years. Seizing the opportunity, Anne Weaver, director of the Academy, asked the two agents to speak to the student body about potentiality to calm them down.

Grant Ward and Skye accompanied Fitz and Simmons to the Academy, where Ward and Fitz noticed the differences between their respective branches of the Academy. Anne Weaver appeared and greeted her former students before Ward started to ask things about the investigation, and a list of possible suspects. Weaver determined that based on the intelligence needed for assembling the device, the suspects were among the top 10% of the cadets.

Ward requested to speak to the victim, Seth Dormer, and Weaver accompanied Fitz and Simmons to the lecture hall. On the campus, Fitz and Simmons were greeted by many students, as they were considered celebrities there, given their status as two of the youngest graduates. This popularity surprised Skye, although Ward was already familiar with their reputation there.

Ward accompanied Skye to the Wall of Valor, a memorial to fallen S.H.I.E.L.D. agents located at all S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities. Skye felt that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s history could be traced in walls like these, but she was not part of it, as she kind of cheated her way into S.H.I.E.L.D. when most agents had to earn their place inside, although Ward felt that a dedication to the greater good was the only thing needed, something that Phil Coulson saw in her the moment they met.

Lecture
Anne Weaver introduced Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz to the student body in the lecture hall, as they were about to give a lecture about potential to the students as they were given during their student years.

Simmons started their lecture regretting the circunstances that took them back to the Academy, while Fitz started with a joke to gain the complicity of the students. Fitz and Simmons spoke about the potential of each of them as scientists, and how they could use their own gifts for good or evil

During the lecture, Grant Ward interviewed Seth Dormer to learn more about the incident at the pool, with Dormer explaining that, besides the rivalry, he was friends with the rest of the top students, as they didn't resort to the same methods used in the Academy of Operations to solve their competitions. However, Dormer pointed Donnie Gill as the only cadet he wouldn't consider a friend, as Gill was very isolated at the Academy and didn't talk to anybody, besides the fact that he was also in the pool during the incident.

Fitz and Simmons continued with their lecture, summarizing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s origin as an agency after the Strategic Scientific Reserve managed to defeat HYDRA, an organization also made by extremely brilliant scientists that, like Centipede or A.I.M., decided to use their potential for evil.

Before they could continue, Donnie Gill suffered an attack with the same device used in the pool, and ended up being entirely frozen before he could escape. Fitz and Simmons quickly intervened to save Gill's life, while Ward and Skye searched for the device, with Ward smashing it when Skye found it. The ice covering Gill's body quickly broke, as the whole student body applauded their intervention.

Skye asked Gill if anyone could want to hurt him, but Weaver made him being escorted to his room to get some rest. Before leaving, Gill apologized to Fitz and Simmons for ruining the lecture, as he was looking forward to hear it.

Weaver and the rest of the agents discussed how the event could now be considered attempted murder, as it looked like Gill was the intended target in the pool too. Weaver revealed Gill was very isolated in the Academy, having no enemies but no friends either, and couldn't adjust to the academy, being one of the youngest cadets since Fitz and Simmons. However, he was so brilliant that it had been considered to graduate him early and assign him to the Sandbox, one of the preferred destinations by the cadets.

Ward asked Weaver to continue their investigations interviewing cadets and instructors, while he and the rest of his team needed to conduct their own investigation as cadets were precisely taught to keep secrets, and the official investigations was not going to bear fruit.

Boiler Room
In order to conduct their own investigation of the attacks, Jemma Simmons revealed that the Boiler Room of the Academy had been transformed into a place where students used to hang out and get away from the faculty.

Grant Ward wanted Skye and Simmons to blend into the students to obtain information while Leo Fitz went to talk to Donnie Gill to know if he knew more than he told them, and as Fitz was a role model for him, he could obtain information more easily, and if not, at least could comfort Gill as a friend.

Skye spent a while chatting with Tad, the bartender of the Boiler Room, and as he was studying computer sciences, Skye easily managed to convince him that she was a Level 7 operative stationed at the Sandbox, as it was the preferred destination for a vast majority of the cadests.

Skye asked the bartender if any of the cadets specially wanted to be assigned there, and he pointed to Callie Hannigan, as she was very ambitious but lost the top spot. Skye informed Ward of her discoveries, and Ward noted that Hannigan was present during the incident at the swimming pool, but didn't wanted to go into the water.

Ward started to play pool with Hannigan to obtain information, though she easily recognized him as an agent from the Academy of Operations. Ward told her he was there to recruit the most brilliant mind for his shadow unit, and that he was impressed by the device used to attack Donnie Gill in the lecture hall.

Hannigan casually revealed that the attacks to Donnie Gill and Seth Dormer using the device allowed them to have the chance to meet Leo Fitz, something they were talking about for weeks even before Fitz was asked to come to the Academy, as they were friends, despited what Dormer formerly told Ward.

Withdrawn Genius
Leo Fitz visited Donnie Gill and they easily connected through their similarities as students, and although Gill assured that it must have been one of the traditional freshman pranks, Fitz told him he should reveal if someone could be targetting him. Fitz was impressed by some of Gill's designs, such as a design for organic light-emitting diodes that could be applied for active camouflage, and an Ionized Air Cannon he constructed, something that impressed Fitz even more when he compared them to the things he designed during his first months. When Fitz advised him to show the designs to the instructors, Gill revealed that those were not his biggest ideas.

Gill revealed a design for a battery that theoretically could carry a terawatt of energy, but he only managed to make it work at a quarter scale, as the beat of the battery increased at a 4-to-1 ratio with scale and melted down before managing. Fitz suggesting changing the lithium ion in the battery for oxygen, as its cooling effect could solve the problem even though it wouldn't the lithium ion that was used as effective as before.

Gill was amazed with the idea and how Fitz easily solved the problem, though Fitz advised him to show the designs to Anne Weaver before testing the battery, as it could be dangerous. Gill commented that now he was sure that the comments about Fitz being the smartest student at the Academy were not unfounded, though Fitz recognized that Jemma Simmons was smarter than him.

Fitz and Gill bonded over their trouble to make friends during their first months at the Academy, something that could be related to their respective family situations. Fitz's mother tried her best to raise his son, but she didn't understand the things that Fitz was interested in, and Gill was isolated by the other kids in his hometown, and his father didn't even tried to understand his son. However, Fitz tried to cheer up Gill and said he would eventually find a friend here, and invited him to hang out with the rest of his team at the Boiler Room. Gill declined the invitation, telling him he would try to draw the changes Fitz thought for his design.

Bad Influence
Donnie Gill quickly applied the changes though by Leo Fitz to a battery, that was designed to power a large version of the Atmospheric Moisture Freezing Device used in staged attacks against Gill and Seth Dormer and divert suspicion from them.

Jemma Simmons called Leo Fitz, who had just left Gill's room, in order to warn him that they wanted to lure him to the Academy and he might be in danger. Fitz dismissed the claims at first, as he left the room without trouble and had a nice chat with Gill, even helping him with a design.

Fitz deduced that Gill actually wanted him to solve the design upon speaking, and returned to Gill's room. Fitz caught him working in the device, and told him how dangerous the device was, and he intended to turn it to Anne Weaver. However, Dormer was hiding behind the door, and rendered Fitz unconscious using the Ionized Air Cannon. Gill was shocked by the events, but Dormer prompted him to leave the Academy with their device.

Dormer contacted Ian Quinn, who helped to acquire some of the rarest components for the device and promised to buy it for a large amount of money. However, Quinn wanted to be extremely discreet with the purchase, and when Dormer informed that S.H.I.E.L.D. was after him and Gill, and wanted to change the deal.

Dormer and Gill were hiding at a parking garage near the Academy, but couldn't flee as there were checkpoints set up around the Academy. Dormer asked Quinn to send a helicopter, but he wanted to withdraw to avoid getting into troubles with S.H.I.E.L.D., but requested Dormer to perform a demonstration of the device to convince him that it was worth the risk.

Artificial Blizzard
Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons and Skye returned to the Bus to rendez-vous with Phil Coulson and Melinda May, who had just returned from Mexico, and traced the components used by Donnie Gill and Seth Dormer to construct the Atmospheric Moisture Freezing Device to Ian Quinn, as Dormer's father worked as a lawyer at Quinn Worldwide.

Dormer was about to activate the device, though Gill was worried that they could have gone too far to simply obtain money, and the devide could be too powerful and unsafe, and they didn't even run virtual simulations. Dormer tried to convince him that impressing Quinn was their only way out as they couldn't return to the Academy, but Gill argued that it was Dormer who knocked Fitz unsconscious, but it was Gill's idea to draw Fitz to the Academy, convincing him to carry on their plan as it had worked until then.

Finally being convinced, Gill turned the device on, but it appeared to do nothing, leaving both cadets clueless about its effectiveness.

Fitz and Simmons detected an enormous ice storm forming around the place Gill and Dormer were hiding, They contacted Grant Ward and Anne Weaver who were at the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy coordinating the search, witnessed how the weather changed and the storm began to take shape.

Dormer and Gill tried to recalibrate the device, and realized that it worked when big hailstones began to fall from the sky, but they were quickly forced to take cover from the growing hailstones, with Gill being overcome by guilt over the results of the device.

As the ice stopped from failing, Gill realized they were just in the eye of the storm, created by the crystalline nucleation process from their device happening in the clouds. Dormer was proud of the results, as he thought it would impress Quinn enough to rescue them and buy the device, but Gill tried to reverse the process, as it was too dangerous even for them.

Ward informed Coulson that students and instructors were hiding at the Boiler Room, who asked him to reach the north campus parking garage to rescue the cadets and destroy the device. Ward tried to exit as the area was near his location, but as he opened the door he realized he would die if he exited the building, forcing them to come across another solution.

While Dormer was helping Gill to reverse the effects of the device, a lightning stroke the device, instantly killing Dormer and destroying the device. Gill tried to wake Dormer up just when Phil Coulson and his team arrived in the Bus, having descended through the eye of the storm to rescue him.

Simmons tried to reanimate Dormer inside the Bus, though she wasn't able to do it. As Coulson declared Dormer's death, Gill was overcome with guilt for the death of his friend.

Once the storm passed, Gill was taken by Weaver to be transferred to the Sandbox in order to be arrested, and Skye returned to the campus alone, as Coulson managed to discover her origins as an 0-8-4 and how S.H.I.E.L.D. protected her since she was a child, spending a few moments at the Wall of Valor in memory of the fallen agents that saved her life.

HYDRA's Infiltration
During the S.H.I.E.L.D. Civil War, the Academy was under siege by HYDRA when Agents Jemma Simmons and Antoine Triplett spoke with Agent Anne Weaver over the Holocom from the Hub. Weaver used this time to warn Simmons and Triplett of the HYDRA threat before being cut off.

Faculty

 * Anne Weaver - Director
 * Vaughn - Professor
 * Franklin Hall - Former Professor

Students

 * Callie Hannigan
 * Tad
 * Seth Dormer † - Former student
 * Leo Fitz - Former student
 * Donnie Gill - Former student
 * Jemma Simmons - Former student

Courses

 * Chemical Kinetics - The study of rates of chemical processes, formerly taught by Doctor Franklin Hall.
 * Holographic Engineering - Students are required to take at least two semesters of the course before they are allowed to use the Holotable.
 * Neurobiology - The scientific study of the nervous system.
 * History of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Taught by Professor Vaughn, it was generally regarded by students as boring