Ever wanted to delve into synthetic biology—or help your kids and their teachers to do so? Now you can explore this merging of biology and engineering techniques through BioBuilder.org, a free website offering animations and activities for anyone who wants to teach or learn about synthetic biology.
Started in 2007, BioBuilder was created under the direction of Natalie Kuldell, instructor in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering, in response to numerous requests for synthetic biology learning materials from policy makers, environmental groups, and others. The labs take students through the process of making and modeling useful living systems.
BioBuilder is populated with short, animated narratives, mostly showing the interaction between a lab scientist, Systems Sally, and an excited young learner, Device Dude. The labs, with brainstorming sessions at the whiteboard and in the laboratory, are aimed at the advanced high school/early college level.
Check Out These Examples
Eau that Smell is a laboratory exercise that compares two alternative genetic designs. Both programs should make the cells smell like ripe bananas as the cells grow, and the lab requires that the students generate a bacterial population growth curve to compare the output of the competing banana-smell designs.
The iTune device lab examines the role of parts, such as promoters and ribosome binding sites, in predicting the output of a genetic device. The students measure b-galactosidase enzymatic activity as the device’s output, thereby looking through the lens of molecular genetics to predict and then evaluate a device’s behavior.
Some years ago, Professor John Wyatt gave an eloquent speech in a faculty meeting on the subject of requirements and how we prepare students for the future. The memorable part is that he supported his position by analogy, noting that the Uniform Code of Military Justice prescribes court martial for any officer that sends a soldier into battle without a weapon.
Since then, I’ve thought that if there were a Uniform Code of Academic Justice, it would prescribe severe penalties for any faculty that sends its students into life without the ability to present and persuade. Without these skills, there is the danger that somebody else will get the job, secure the venture capital, or make the sale because he knows how to wrap up his lesser idea with a prettier ribbon.
I didn’t know anything about presenting or persuading when I graduated from MIT. My presentation skills were beneath all standards, and my persuasion skills were in the MIT tradition, well aligned with those of piranhas.
This is one dimension in which today is better than the good old days. Subjects such as 6.UAT, centered on effective written and oral packaging, ensure that MIT students no longer go into battle without a weapon.
To do my bit, each year I speak on the subject of how to speak on the final day of IAP. I offer a few more than two-dozen powerful ideas for how to start, how to stop, and what to do in between.
There being no 6.UAT when I was an undergraduate, my powerful ideas mostly come from talking with and observing MIT’s star speakers. From Randall Davis, I learned to start with an empowerment promise. From Seymour Papert, I learned I could keep my hands out of my pockets by using them to point at the blackboard.
I learned one of my favorite powerful ideas in a bar in Houston where I was attending a conference. I was talking with Doug Lenat, a star speaker in my field, Artificial Intelligence.
“Doug,” I said. “Why are you such a respected speaker.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “I always end with a good joke. That way they think they have had fun the whole time.”
Guest Blogger: Jessica Lin ’12, computer science major
Alumnus host: Bela Prasad PhD ’02
Jessica wielding a hoe.
Mr. Rosignol wields his red chainsaw like a toy. The whole day, he’s been cutting trees on this precarious fifty-degree slope, strewn with loose leaves and soil that give way beneath even his small frame. I’ve slipped just standing on the lower part of the incline. He’s wearing bright red coveralls and no ear or eye protection, which makes me nervous as his saw groans and revs and wood chips spray in a fifteen-foot radius around him.
This afternoon, I’m helping him pile logs from the trees he’s cut onto his tractor. The logs will go to the wood shed, where they’ll age for at least three years before they’re ready to be used as firewood.
Mr. Rosignol stops and says something. He speaks only French and has a thick accent local to this rural southwestern region of France–definitely not the crisp speech I heard in high school French class recordings. At first, I can’t figure out what he’s saying, so I have to ask him to repeat himself.
“I’m sixty-seven,” he’s saying. “You look like you’re twenty.” Yet I’ve been doing less work than him, and he’s probably less tired.
The four MIT students on the farming externship. From left: Alexandra de Rosa '13, Jessica Lin '12, Harrison Chen '11, and Patrick Gichuiri '13.
This was just one of the first days of my externship at a small farm on the outskirts of Najac. The farm—owned by Bela Prasad PhD ’02 and Vig Haraldsson SM ’00—is just starting up, soon to become a vineyard. For the past three weeks the three other MIT students here and I have been clearing land in preparation for planting. It’s physical work—turning soil and digging out tenacious weeds, chopping down small trees, laying down gravel paths, and so on.
Yes, I study computer science, and this externship has blissfully nothing to do with it. Instead of thinking about code, I’ve been thinking about how to best protect an area of soil from weeds long-term, how to best move mounds of heavy pebble to its needed location, and how to maintain the structural integrity of centuries-old dry stone walls. Instead of sitting at a keyboard tapping for hours at a time, I’ve cut down my computer usage to, on average, less than an hour a day. Computer science has removed me from physical work, but I’ve had a healthy dose of it here.
I’m gaining muscle and strength every day, but working here is also surprisingly good for the mind and spirit. I’ve improved my concentration simply by being removed from constant context-switching between different classes and p-sets and events. I’m always content, maybe due to the consistently beautiful and quiet surroundings. Mr. Rosignol, my fellow worker for a day, sets an example of the grittiness and self-reliance of the countryside, a place that through its austerity shows me there’s much I don’t need for happiness. The absence of traffic sounds and bright city lights at night is striking.
Life here seems to move more slowly; it takes longer to do some simple things. To throw out the trash, for example, we walk a quarter mile to a bin at the mouth of the small road that runs in front of the farm. But taking out the trash has also never been this scenic and pleasant a stroll.
The front of one of the two farmhouses, showing a fraction of the students' work. The slope on the left side was overgrown with brambles, bushes, and small trees before they arrived, and the path was not visible.
Thanks to Tupper Hyde ’88, PhD ’96 for sending along these photos!
Above: Seven MIT undergraduate externs and nine alumni celebrated 150 years of MIT and a Toast to IAP at a gathering at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center (GSFC) on January 19, 2011. During lunch, students got to talk about their life at MIT, their externship projects at GSFC, and the best and worst things about life at MIT. The alums introduced themselves and told about their favorite IAP experiences. From left: Alex Mason ’12; Ben Shaibu ’14; Aprille Ericsson-Jackson ’86; Alice Liu PhD ’03; Amil Patel SM ’04, PhD ’10; Daesun Yim ’14; Russell Roder ’01; Lance Wall ’11; Ijeoma Emeagwali ’12; Jeffrey Livas ’81, PhD ’87; Melissa Kornspan ’14; Carl Wales ’76, OCE ’82, SM ’82; Tupper Hyde ’88, PhD ’96; Mahmooda Sultana PhD ’10; Max St. John ’12; and John Van Eepoel SM ’03.
Above: Five MIT externs toured the immersive 3-D display Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) in Building 28 at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center on January 19, 2011. From left: Daesun Yim ’14, Alex Mason ’12, Max St. John ’12, John Van Eepoel SM ’03, Melissa Kornspan ’14, and Ijeoma Emeagwali ’12.
At this week’s symposium, Economics and Finance: From Theory to Practice to Policy—the first of six such events being held as part of MIT’s 150th anniversary celebration—alumni will play a central role: 22 of the panelists have earned degrees from the Institute.
In addition, nearly 300 alumni have registered to attend the symposium, which takes place beginning at 8:45 a.m. today, Thursday, Jan. 27, and tomorrow, in Kresge Auditorium.
Of the 22 alumni panelists, 13 are economics professors from the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and MIT. Two teach finance at Duke and MIT, respectively. Six of the seven Nobel laureates slated to take to the podium are alumni. Each was honored by the Nobel committee with the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences.
Nobel laureate Robert Merton PhD ’70, who teaches finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, will deliver Friday’s keynote on the future of finance. Merton’s current academic interests include financial innovation and dynamics of institutional change, controlling the propagation of macro financial risk, and improving methods of measuring and managing sovereign risk. Other notable alumni presenters include Olivier Blanchard PhD ’77, MIT economics professor and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, and Hal R. Varian ’69, Google’s chief economist.
In the MIT150 Infinite History narratives, you can learn more about MIT alumni faculty in economics and finance, such as two economists who have won Nobels and served as Institute professors—Peter Diamond PhD ’63 and Paul Samuelson SM ’77, PhD ’87.
A link to the archived webcast of this symposium will be posted here at a later date.
The good news is that representation of US women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has risen in recent decades; the bad news: American women ages 16-25 still don’t think of themselves as inventive, despite possessing many of the traits necessary to become inventors. Such were the findings of the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, published last week, which gauges Americans’ perceptions about invention and innovation.
In numbers
About 71 percent of young women surveyed indicated that they are creative, the characteristic they most associate with inventors (63 percent).
Less than one in three (27 percent) described themselves as inventive.
Two of every five female respondents (42 percent) rate math and science as their favorite subjects in school.
Thirty-five percent of young women also say they have a family member working in a field related to science, technology, math or engineering.
In tables
Young Adults' Invention Interests Credit: Lemelson-MIT Invention Index
Young Adults Say Japan Outranks U.S. in Invention Advances Credit: Lemelson-MIT Invention Index
What it means
Authors of the survey said in a press release, “The results reveal young women’s innate interest in inventive fields; however, recent statistics show while more women are entering college and obtaining degrees, less than ten percent earn them in technical majors such as computer and information sciences, engineering or math.” This relatively small group underscores the importance of educating students, particularly women, about their post-grad options for employment in inventive careers.
PBS’s Design Squad is perhaps the best educational engineering television show for kids, and now the series is set to launch version 2.0: Design Squad Nation. Once again, an MIT alumnus will serve as co-host, offering teens and tweens a role model of a successful, inventive, and fun engineer.
Adam Vollmer SM ’05, who studied mechanical engineering at MIT, and Judy Lee will travel the globe showing kids that if they can dream it, they can build it. In the first of 10 episodes, the pair, both engineers at the design and innovation firm IDEO in Northern California, help skateboarders create a modular, weather-resistant skate park on an Apache reservation in Arizona. In other episodes, they join with children from the rural village of Cusmapa, Nicaragua, to build a dream playground and help a 15-year-old pilot from Miami construct a human-powered flying machine (with a little help from NASA) for the 2010 Red Bull Flugtag competition. See below for a Q&A with Vollmer.
In one episode, Vollmer and co-host Judy Lee (left) help a young pastry chef create a Frankenstein cake that literally moves.
As always, a companion website offers a host of educational materials based on the episodes to excite a new generation of engineers and inspire them to change the world.
Design Squad aims to increase students’ knowledge of engineering and the design process, improve the public image of engineering, and encourage further exploration. The original version, which aired three seasons and was hosted by Nate Ball ’05, SM ’07, was a scholarship contest that challenged teams of teenage contestants to design and build problem-solving products for actual clients. The show won Emmy and Peabody awards and has strong ties to the Institute. Several members of the MIT community were instrumental in its development and production.
Design Squad Nation premieres on PBS nationwide starting tomorrow, Jan. 26. Check your local listings for air times. In the Boston area, it will be shown Sunday, Jan. 30, at 10:30 a.m. on WGBH 2. Check out the YouTube channel for full episodes and highlights from the show.
Update: In February, Vollmer answered a few questions for Slice.
Q: Have you always been involved in helping boost K-12 STEM education?
AV: While I was at MIT, a friend and I founded a small group called Science Explorers, whose mission was to pair dynamic young scientists and engineers with elementary and middle school kids to show them how exciting, captivating, and relevant math and science could be. We designed a curriculum of science projects, demos, and experiments and recruited friends to volunteer. It was a great success. Ultimately we were teaching at three different locations in Cambridge and Roxbury and were fairly regularly invited to science fairs and other community events. We’d wear our MIT lab coats as our “uniforms”—it was as much about theater as it was about education. I’ve always thought that fun and entertainment (in a smart way) has a big place in education.
Q: What was the most inspiring or fulfilling episode you filmed?
AV: If I had to pick one, I would say that our episode in Nicaragua, designing and building from scratch a playground with the community of Cusmapa, stands out. We had only three days, and without an amazing amount of hard work from the kids, their families, and the team from Roadmonkey, we never would have finished in this short amount of time. This project will always be special to me because I know that each and every person involved learned so much about how to work with their hands, build, and work as a team, and created something special that the children of Cusmapa will enjoy for many years to come.
Editor’s note: this Nicaragua-based DIY Playground episode will air locally in Boston on WGBH on Sunday, March 13, at 10:30 a.m. It will also be available in full for streaming.
Q: What have you learned about promoting engineering through this medium?
AV: The emotions you go through when you’re building something—anxiety about deadlines and technical challenges, frustration at failure, and excitement about success, are all such a real and important part of the engineering process, that it’s important to capture those on camera when they happen if you really want to show the audience what it’s all about. We worked hard for that authenticity, and it’s one of the things I’m most proud of on the show.
Indiana telephone banquet. Photos courtesy MIT Archives.
On June 14, 1916, about 1,500 alumni, friends, and dignitaries convened in Symphony Hall, Boston, to celebrate the new campus opening up in Cambridge. Alumni also assembled in 34 other locations around the country and harnessed the most powerful technology of the time to communicate with each other—telephone.
The American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) set up the connections for the telephone banquets and boasted that this was “the most elaborate trans-continental telephone stunt ever staged.” From San Francisco to Minneapolis to New Orleans, alumni simultaneously listened to speeches by MIT President Richard Maclaurin, famous inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, aviator Orville Wright, and many others. They raised $3 million for the new Cambridge location and finished the evening by singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” led by the Washington, D.C. club.
Montana telephone banquet.
The chief engineer of AT&T, J.J. Carty, remarked that it was especially fitting that this demonstration of simultaneous communications should occur at MIT since, he said, the telephone owed more to MIT than to any other institution.
Photos from the dinners show formally dressed diners looking rapt with telephone receivers pressed to their ears.
What did people eat at such a lavish and innovative event? The Boston club began with clear green turtle soup, followed by Penobscot salmon in sauce with peas, then larded filet of beef with potatoes and beans. After sweetbreads with asparagus, diners enjoyed a cigarette break. Thus rested and refreshed, they plowed through roast jumbo squab, farcies (stuffed vegetables), salad, fancy frozen pudding ices and assorted cakes, ending finally with cigars, coffee, and Clysmic (spring) water.
Started in 2007, BioBuilder was created under the direction of Natalie Kuldell, instructor in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering, in response to numerous requests for synthetic biology learning materials from policy makers, environmental groups, and others. The labs take students through the process of making and modeling useful living systems.
Lunch at the three star Michelin restaurant Pierre Gagnaire in Paris (© Owen Franken).
Yao tribe woman with her chicken at a market in northern Laos (© Owen Franken).
