Outreach

For our outreach to community, we collaborated with another University of Chicago Recognized Student Association (RSO) called Paradigm Shift, which teaches and plans science-based curriculum, including hands-on activities, lessons, and trips for local middle school students at St. Thomas School in Hyde Park, Chicago, about a fifteen minute walk from the University of Chicago. We taught four total lessons over two weeks to seventh and eight graders, and had a lot of fun doing so! We came up with several hands-on lesson plans to introduce some basic synthetic biology concepts to the students, ranging from DNA extraction from strawberries to testing genetically inherited ability to taste bitter substances, as well as leading a discussion on real-world applications of synthetic biology. Check out the pictures we took with our students.