Elizabeth Hobson, NIMBioS postdoctoral fellow (standing, black shirt) helping visiting students from Greenback School with an image analysis activity.
NIMBioS hosted two events for middle school students last week that resulted in over 100 students, parents and teachers visiting the institute. On the agenda were fun activities to inspire students to pursue higher education in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The first event was a field trip by 7th graders from Greenback School in Loudon County, TN, which brought 60 students and three teachers for a day learning about biodiversity and computer image analysis, touring the university library, and building windmills and doing engineering lab tours at CURENT, an engineering center across campus.
Greenback School students took fun photos in the Studio at the University of Tennessee Library during a tour there. Later Eric Carr, NIMBioS High Performance Computing Specialist, ran image altering edge-detection MATLAB code that the students had learned about on the photos.
NIMBioS also co-hosted SHADES, Sharing Adventures in Engineering & Science, a STEM symposium for 6th and 7th grade girls. The annual event organized by the Greater Knoxville Math/Science Coalition had 34 student participants from the greater Knoxville area, plus parents, Girl Scout Troop leaders, and teachers. Volunteers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee, NIMBioS, and TNSCORE all contributed activities. Highlights included T-shirt chromatography, using Geiger counters, and an engineering competition using fuel cell model cars.
A number of NIMBioS volunteers contributed to the event by helping out the Education & Outreach staff. Special thanks to Eric Carr, NIMBioS HPC Specialist, for putting together a great activity on image analysis, to volunteer helpers and NIMBioS postdoctoral fellows Amiyaal Ilany, Elizabeth Hobson, Jeremy Beaulieu and NIMBioS graduate assistant Ben Levy.
Participants at SHADES sort plastic insects for an activity on using probability to measure biodiversity.