Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers

The Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT), annually held on Cornell campus, was created to support high school biology teachers by giving them an environment to join with other teachers and learn about new lab techniques and advances in biology. The mission of the institute is that the teachers will bring what they learned back into their classrooms to continue inspiring their students. We aided CIBT by giving a presentation about our past and present projects, explaining what synthetic biology is and how it can be used in our society. We also showed the teachers our lab space and showed them where we performed each part of certain reactions.

As interested as our audience was in our current work, they found our high school experiences more relevant. Each of our members comes from a different high school, ranging from large to small, well-funded to under-funded, public to private, etc. Our hope is that after our presentation, the high school teachers left with the belief that no matter the circumstances hard work, dedication, and support can get a student anywhere they desire. It is our goal too that young students are inspired to work hard towards biological sciences.

SILS Presentation

The Summer Institute for the Life Sciences (SILS) organization culminates with an undergraduate research symposium that allows upcoming researchers to present their work to other students and faculty. We presented at this event to raise awareness of synthetic biology and our work among other Cornell researchers.

PSP Lab Tour

Each summer Cornell University invites a number of incoming freshmen that come from underprivileged high schools to campus where they participate in different summer-educational sessions. This program is called the Cornell Pre-freshmen Summer Research Program. This summer Cornell iGEM led a group of students on a tour of our lab. The purpose of this tour was to expose them to the many different undergraduate research opportunities that are available at Cornell University and, more specifically, what we do in a synthetic biology lab. The Pre-freshman Summer Program, PSP, is designed to aid incoming freshmen in the transition to college life their first year.