REU Site: UC Berkeley Summer BioChIP (Biology on a Chip Internship Program)

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This REU site program entitled "Biology on a Chip Internship Program (BioChiP)" will be hosted by the Department of Bioengineering and the Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center (BNC) at the University of California at Berkeley. The BioChIP mission is to lay the scientific and engineering foundations for the design, simulation, fabrication and characterization of novel quantitative biological diagnostic devices for use in clinical and research settings. The students' research experience will be enhanced by a variety of educational activities. They will attend a weekly workshop that will be focused on how to design experiments, how to structure logical oral presentations and written reports as well as how to successfully prepare for graduate school admissions. Journal articles relevant to the field of biological diagnostics will also be presented at this weekly meeting. Each participant will be required to read and present one journal article over the course of the 10-week program. The REU site program will culminate with a final Poster Symposium at which each participant will present a poster that summarizes his or her summer research project. An interesting feature of this REU program is the Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) component. During this program 2 San Francisco Bay Area high school teachers will spend 1-week in the BioChip laboratory at the BNC learning a high-school appropriate microfluidics lab exercise. At the end of the program each high school teacher will receive a stipend and support for supplies to run the microfluidics lab exercise with their students at the high schools. The Principal Investigator (PI) will focus recruitment efforts towards students from members of underrepresented minorities and students from schools where research opportunities are limited. The goal is to have 75% of the participants come from underrepresented groups and 50% of the participants be women. Also, by including the RET component to teach high school teachers a microfluidics lab exercise, the PI hopes to reach a diverse pool of high school students who otherwise might not have considered careers in science or engineering.