What happens when you let smart teenagers play with their passions
Love this: Two and a half years ago, a high school freshman called up a cell biologist and asked him to "give her a try in his lab.' This month, Raina Jain of Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, won the International BioGENEius Challenge—a sort-of mega science fair—with a project to test which type of surfaces are best for growing the precursor cells that could one day be used to create bone implants.
Kudos to Dr. Matthias Falk, of Lehigh University, for giving Jain that proverbial try. I wish more high schoolers had the opportunity to poke their noses around laboratories and learn about the things they think are cool in a way that allows them to go as far as their brains can reach. This is just simply something you can't get in a high school class that has to teach the basics to everybody.
The fact that Jain's folks are a doctor and a materials scientist probably helped a lot on cluing her into potential opportunities. It's not something that would have ever occurred to me as a possibility when I was that age. Hopefully, this post will inspire other young brains to reach out to older ones—and vice versa.
Image provided by Flickr user x_ray_delta_one
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
I do the Twitter, the Google+, and (to a much lesser extent) the Facebook.
Books
• Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us
Upcoming Appearances
• April 2 at Skeptics in the Pub, Boston, Mass.— 7:00 pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square. Please RSVP.
•April 4 at MIT: "Shedding Light, Online", a discussion about how blogging and a dynamic audience helped shape my book, Before the Lights Go Out—4:00 pm in Maseeh Hall. Please RSVP.
• April 6 at Carnegie Mellon University: More details to come
• April 9-13 at University of Colorado, Boulder: 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs
• April 10 at Colorado State University, Fort Collins: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—3:30 pm in the Rocky Mountain Innosphere.
• April 19 at The Bakken Museum in Minneapolis: Book Launch Party! Come enjoy snacks, a presentation by me, and some fun with the Bakken's Leyden jar.
• April 21 at Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul: Earth Day Tweetup event with Will Steger and Sean Otto—events run 10:00 am to 2:00 pm.
• May 2 at University of California, Berkeley: "Putting the Fun Back in Infrastructure"—6:00 pm, location TBA.
• May 3 at the American Institute of Architects, San Francisco Chapter—Lunchtime lecture, time and location TBA.
• May 3 at Barnes and Noble, El Cerrito, Cali.—7:00 pm.
• May 30 in New York City—Panel on local and DIY energy with the New America Foundation
• June 22-25 in Aspen, Colorado: Aspen Environment Forum
• July 5-8 at CONvergence in Minneapolis, Minn.—exact times and dates TBA
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