A zero-cost online biotechnology program for middle and high schools
Abstract
Approved for Public Release Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public in the US, trains 75,000 students every year, ~23,000 of whom are employed in defense services. Southern Arizona’s six military assets provide more than 57,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs, which are rife with ASU graduates. A significant number of these students are domestic, and come from underserved schools in remote areas of the Southwest. Inadequacies in their K-12 education hinders progress in college-level biosciences and biotechnology, limiting their presence in our Honors programs, and the overall sustainability in higher education. Using the area of molecular and nanobiotechnology as an example, we will create a computer-aided education pipeline that channels cadres of high-school students from the K-12 system into higher education. Capitalizing on remote-visualization capabilities we developed at ASU, and using Digital Cloud Visualization or DCV, the library computers of Title I schools will be directly connected with our high-end computing facilities and national supercomputers. Overcoming the infrastructural needs for a dedicated computer lab, even with a weakly configured computer in the poorest of school districts, the remote-visualization using DCV will allow K-12 students to investigate the molecular code of life and their biotechnological applications in an enquiry-based virtual environment. This mode of online education comes at zero overhead for the high schools. Through a certification program, the K-12 teachers and students will be trained hands-on by Biotech and Education expert stakeholders at ASU, DoD and DOE labs, and participants from the Pat Tillman Veterans Center. The outcome will be a collection of well-trained K-12 students driven towards specialization in Biotechnology across their future endeavors. Specific activities of our Biotechnology Pipeline are: 1. Creation of six biotechnology e-modules and exercises using interactive molecular simulations for grades 8 through 12, that (i) enhance frozen 2D images from book chapters to 3D visualization and “real-time” monitoring of protein movements across cells and viruses, and (ii) explore simplified artificial intelligence models of cutting-edge biotechnologies, including in molecular motors, gene-editing and CRISPR-Cas9 systems, RNA origami, and artificial photosynthesis, introducing students to key focus areas of DoD research. 2. A teacher-certification program and capstone course development on computer programming and interactive biotechnology with ASU’s EdPlus initiative led by the School of Molecular sciences, Mary Fulton Teachers College, and the Pat Tillman Veterans Center. 3. Cyberinfrastructure development with research computing at ASU supported by the advanced visualization team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) – home to Summit, the largest super computer in the US – for parallel processing of the virtual labs and virtual mentorship management to serve hundreds of school libraries across the US simultaneously. 4. Internship programs for students and teachers within our network of stakeholders at ASU, ORNL, and DoD’s Engineer Research and Development Center Science through the Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP). 5. Evaluation program by ASU’s CREST team, and free public dissemination of our DCV platform and the biotech modules by the DoD-sponsored CGEST center, also at ASU. Implementation of our zero-cost K-12 pipeline will immediately engage 10 Arizona secondary schools (with 8 Title I programs), 20 teachers, and nearly 300 students in enquiry-based biotechnology education every year. About 105 of the US citizen high-school students will be exposed to federally-funded research at biotechnology laboratories. Success of our biotechnology pipeline will reflect in a scale-up to middle and high schools all across the US, including deployment in remote locations to serve on-ground military personnel and their families.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 10, 2021
- Source ID
- HQ00342110007
Entities
People
- Abhishek Singharoy
Organizations
- Arizona State University
- Office of the Secretary of Defense
- Washington Headquarters Services