Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab
Our group formed a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago (BGCC) to engage underserved middle and high school students in hands-on research experiences in the biomedical sciences. Our goal is to inspire students from marginalized backgrounds to become the next cohort of university STEM majors through applied training in chemistry, microbiology, robotics, and medicine. We meet weekly and a middle/high school student is paired with a graduate student/postdoc mentor. The student collects samples from their own neighborhood, programs a robot to grow a library of bacteria, tests their library for the ability to inhibit deadly pathogens, and tries to discover new antibiotics. This is all done safely using a biosafety level-2 cabinet and high-throughput robotics! Early efforts have seen success, as a middle school student and her mentor team have discovered a new cyclic lipopeptide and are in the process of publishing the data!
2021 - present: Chicago Antibiotic Discovery Lab
Four cohorts of Middle school students (22 total) graduated from our CADL program. Here they gained exposure to applied microbiology, chemistry, computer programming, high-throughput robotics, and bioinformatic data analyses. Each project experiment was coupled to a related career in STEM.
Experimental process:
Become active.
Build a bridge between university and community.
Undergraduate and graduate students learn to teach. Youth experience hands-on science from their neighbors. Regardless of your position in academia, you can start this partnership!