Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers

The Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers (CIBT) is an annual workshop held on Cornell campus that was created to support high school biology teachers by creating an environment where they could work with colleagues to learn new lab techniques and gain information on recent advances in biology. The mission of the institute was to provide teachers with knowledge that they could bring 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 how certain experiments were performed at various stages of our project.

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. The goal of our presentation was to assure high school teachers that no matter what the circumstances, hard work, dedication, and support can get a student anywhere they desire. It is our goal too, to inspire young students who are interested in biological sciences and encourage them to work hard towards their goals because they have the resources and support that they need to succeed.

SILS Presentation

The Summer Institute for the Life Sciences (SILS) organization culminates in 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. As a relatively nascent field, synthetic biology has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. Events such as these help demystify the discipline, thereby making it more familiar to both academics and the general population alike.

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. The Pre-freshman Summer Program, PSP, is designed to aid incoming freshmen in the transition to college life their first year. By participating in this program our team was able to lead a group of students on a tour of our lab, and expose them to the many opportunities available for research at Cornell. This also allowed our team to give these ambitious young minds a foray into the field of synthetic biology and what the discipline is really about.