Category Archives: Education

Genome Hackers – a near-peer, interdisciplinary summer program for high school girls

By: Cindy Yeh, Graduate Student, (Dunham Lab, Genome Sciences), University of Washington Only 26% of the computing professional workforce is made of women, less than 10% of whom are women of color (ncwit.org). This is in contrast to the gender … Continue reading

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Using a course-based undergraduate research experience to increase leadership opportunities for students

By: Katie Dickinson, research scientist, Kerr Lab (Department of Biology), University of Washington Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are becoming increasingly popular, as they enable all students to gain the positive outcomes associated with undergraduate research. In a CURE, students … Continue reading

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Avida-ED in Action

BEACON scientists and educators featured in MSU Today reporting on a recent publication highlighting the use of Avida-ED in a newly developed undergraduate biology course. The course IBIO150 Integrative Biology: From DNA to Populations, was developed with non-Biology STEM majors … Continue reading

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Evolutionary Computation Experts Video Collection

This blog post is by Risto Miikkulainen [1,2], Paul Jarratt [2], and Andrew Turner [2] from (1) The University of Texas at Austin and (2) Sentient Technologies Given recent advances in evolutionary computation technology, available computational power, and opportunities for AI in … Continue reading

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High school phage hunters: an experiment to encourage young scientists

This post is by MSU postdoc Sarah Doore, with contributions from Dr. Kristin Parent and Mr. Kevin Schrad For the last couple years, our lab at MSU has been advocating “phage hunting” as part of the biology classroom experience. Bacteriophages—”phages” for … Continue reading

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In the Light of Evolution: Connecting Genotype to Phenotype and Fitness in an Introductory Biology Class

This post is by UW research scientist Katie Dickinson “It was through the [Bio180 CURE] class that biology truly came to life and I felt that our time in [the] lab was interesting and relevant to our world today. The large … Continue reading

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Art and Science, Science and Art: Science outreach to young artists

This post is by MSU grad student Cybil Nicole “Nikki” Cavalieri “I am not good at science, I am more artistic.” “I have decided to drop biology, I am changing my degree to packaging I want to work in a … Continue reading

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Living Laboratories: Using islands to track natural selection in wild lizards

This post is by MSU postdocs Melissa Kjelvik and Liz Schultheis, and BEACON education director Louise Mead The National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) annual Professional Development Conference provides biology educators from across the nation the opportunity to join other leaders in … Continue reading

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The phage from the local lagoon

This post is by MSU postdoc Sarah Doore Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about doing some hunting with a graduate class here at Michigan State University. I’m not talking about hunting in the traditional sense though, since what … Continue reading

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