Samonina, Jelena / Chemistry

Dream idea: The Joy of Science and Discovery!

As a passionate educator in chemistry, it is always a great joy and honor to teach and mentor highly capable students who are genuinely interested in science and nature. My students come from very diverse backgrounds, but are united in their desire to help other people by mastering their skills of medicine, engineering, science, and even art.

My Dream Idea is to encourage diverse group of passionate students to harness their creative and artistic skills while discovering new insights about chemistry and nature. Specifically, I will assemble motivated students from biology, chemistry, computer science, neuroscience, and art into several small teams. Each team will pick an interesting biologically active molecule or macromolecular complex, such as cholesterol, lipoprotein, morphine, insulin, protein transporter, etc. They will then develop creative ways to express and illustrate the biological and chemical properties of their target molecule.

For example, an art student can create an artistic expression that describes the biomolecule through sculpture, painting, song, dance, poem, or any other form of art; a computer science student could program and graphically animate the molecular behavior; an engineering student could 3-D print variations of the molecule, etc.

We will meet twice a month in a “Makerspace” in Chemistry Department. During the first meeting we will discuss the objectives, form teams, and choose the target molecules. The second meeting  will explore  ideas  on  creating,  expressing,  and  illustrating  these  molecules. In subsequent meetings the students will share their discoveries and further develop their projects. During our last meeting each team will present the result of their work in the form of video demos.

The teams will publish their projects and videos on the Web, which will compound the visibility and outreach of this initiative. We will further leverage these project videos by utilizing them in subsequent courses and lectures, as they will continue to inspire and excite future students. The goal is to actively engage, learn, collaborate, and experience the joy and excitement of science and discovery!

Budget:

6 meetings x (lunch for 10 students + professor) = 6 x 11 x $18 = $1,188 (10x students + 1 professor) x $28 = $308 final dinner

Molecular models + material needed for the projects (for example 3-D printing): $1,000 T-shirt for student participation in the project: $20 x 10 = $200

Total: $1,188 + $308 + $1,000 + $200 = $2,696