cc >> Tom Zinnen: Welcome,
everyone. My name is Tom Zinnen and
welcome to the special edition of Wednesday Nite at the Lab
here at the new Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Wednesday Nite at the Lab is a public science series we offer
here on campus every Wednesday night, 50 times a year.
It's sponsored by the Biotech Center, UW Extension Cooperative
Extension, the Wisconsin Alumni Association and Wisconsin Public
Television. And on behalf of all those
folks, welcome here to Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
Tonight we have three speakers. Dr. Laura Heisler is the
director of the programming here for the Wisconsin Alumni
Research Foundation which is one of the co-owners of this
building. Her role includes developing and
coordinating programs for the Town Center and the embedded
teaching labs here at the Wisconsin Institutes for
Discovery. Laura has been involved in
helping plan and coordinate numerous aspects of the
Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery since its inception in
2006. She brings more than two decades
of biotech industry, intellectual property and
research experience to the creation of platforms for
engagement, business acceleration and academic
collaboration here at this new facility.
Dr. Susan Millar is the director of the education research area
for the Morgridge Institute for Research and of the education
research development group for the Wisconsin Institute for
Discovery. Dr. Millar is an anthropologist
and senior scientist in the UW Center for Education Research
and is a national leader in the evaluation of science education
reform. She's leading a team in the
development of online interactive computer games and
other resources designed to help young learners and adults learn
core science and engineering concepts in biomedical
disciplines. Dr. Rupa Shevde is director of
the outreach experiences for Morgridge Institute for
Research. She is also a senior, excuse me,
she is also a senior scientist and the director of education
and outreach at the WiCell Research Institute and a
UW-Madison honorary associate fellow in biochemistry here in
the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Rupa is expanding her role to lead the development and
operation of scientific learning programs directed at youth and
the general public here at the Morgridge Institute for
Research. We will also have another
special visitor, and I think Laura will be able to help
introduce that special visitor, but why don't I ask you to join
me in welcoming Dr. Laura Heisler to the lectern here for
Wednesday Nite at the Lab. [APPLAUSE]
Laura Heisler: Thanks, Tom. And I would actually offer, and
thank you all for coming, I would actually offer that an
equally significant day in science outreach at Wisconsin
was the day that Tom Zinnen came to campus and started Wednesday
Nite at the Lab. So I really want to thank Tom
for including an absolutely... [APPLAUSE]
Letting us be a part of that great legacy and letting us
have our very first Wednesday night be in this series.
It's really exciting to us and everything we would have hoped
for. So I actually have given a talk
about the Town Center probably a hundred times over the past year
and a half. This is my first slide
presentation in the Town Center so I'm very excited about that.
And in honor of that, I have actually very few slides because
as I was putting things together I thought, you know, I don't
have to show them what these things look like, I can point at
them. And it's just absolutely a huge
revelation and it's really exciting.
So to help me get started, though, I really want to invite
this visitor who is going to help us think about what's
possible here probably at a level that you're not used to
thinking about with science engagement.
So I'd like to invite Buckingham U Badger to be a part
of how we begin to explore what we can do at the Town Center.
So, Bucky, if you could join me up here.
[APPLAUSE] I don't think Bucky needs a mic.
Bucky and I were talking yesterday but I don't think
Bucky needs a mic. Am I right, Bucky, you don't
need a mic? No.
Bucky doesn't need a mic. So we've been getting to know
each other as part of putting this whole thing together.
We've been talking a little and I've been asking around about
Bucky and I've heard a couple things.
One is that I heard that Bucky loves nature.
Am I right? You like to go for hikes.
You like flowers. Am I right?
And I have heard that you have a favorite flower.
I'm going to just guess. I hope I got this right because
I talked to a few people but this is pretty fresh.
Is this your favorite flower, Bucky?
[LAUGHTER] Yeah, I thought so.
[APPLAUSE] Would you like these?
[APPLAUSE] Now, Bucky is very excited about
roses for a lot of reasons, but I think some things that
Bucky doesn't know and I think some things that we're
going to be able to explore here, and I'm sorry these roses
are a little sad, is that actually roses, all roses are
descended from the kinds of plants that you can find in the
garden just over here. So we call this our Mesozoic
garden, and so instead of just putting green plants to create
an environment that was warm and friendly and welcoming in the
winter, the organizers of the building got together with the
botany department and the horticulture department and
curated the country's only permanent indoor installation of
a Mesozoic era or dinosaur era garden.
So it's not just green plants, it is green plants but it's not
just green plants. It's actually a teaching tool;
it's a learning tool, it's an exploration tool.
And to bring this tool to life we actually put in one of what
we call our discovery niches. So we have a lot of different,
or three different discovery niches in the building, and I'll
talk about them. But in the Mesozoic garden, if
you go over there and some of you can see it from here, it's
this red touchscreen very inviting shape that you want to
go and touch it. And you'll be able to take a
tour through time and understand why these plants are
significant, why this moment in time when these plants or the
ancestors of these plants were around is significant, how in
fact all flowering plants, and therefore all crops and all
vegetation that we rely on to produce, well I shouldn't say
all vegetation to produce food, but all crops, all flowering
plants actually have their origins from the kinds of plants
that you see in the Mesozoic garden.
You'll be able to make connections to the geology that
was contemporary with those plants and in the building and
we're going to have rotating displays from the geology museum
in that niche. So that gives you a sample of
sort of what's going on in the Town Center.
Now the other thing that's really important that I know
about you, Bucky, is that you like the Badgers and you like to
go to football games. I heard it, I think it's true.
[LAUGHTER] So one of the visions for
this whole facility, and this is a remarkable thing as Tom said,
and we just had a session at 5:00 o'clock tonight
where we were hearing from a school teacher who was just in
Boston. He said even in Boston where
there are more universities per capita per square mile than
anywhere on the planet, they don't have anything like this.
One of the founding visions of John and Tashia Morgridge in
particular, who gave very generously to make this
possible, was that on football Saturdays, and no offense Bucky,
that people would be as excited about coming here, you can come,
so people would be as excited to come here and learn about
science as they would be to go to the football game.
Now that's a tall order but I think we can do it.
And one of the programs I'll mention, and I have a listing of
some of the things that are in progress right now, is something
called Huddles with Faculty. And this will be done in
partnership with the Alumni Association where on football
Saturdays, and you might or might not like this, we're going
to have a faculty member from UW, we're going to have a
faculty member from the other team's university and they're
going to explore some science together.
And so we'll see where that can go but it's something the Alumni
Association has done before. We couldn't have a better place.
We're going to have Babcock ice cream.
We're right here by Camp Randall.
So that's another thing that you can be excited about, Bucky.
So thanks so much for coming. And I think I'm going to move on
with my presentation and I know you have some push-ups to do and
you have a big trip coming. [LAUGHTER]
So thanks so much, Bucky. Thank you so much for coming.
[APPLAUSE] Sorry about the rose.
Thank you. Awesome.
All right so I'm just going to spend a few minutes now going
through some of the goals in a little bit more formal way of
what we intend to do here, what's going on and what you can
look for in the near term. And I'll show you as we're
standing here some of the things.
So I know the public TV folks are sad that the doors are open
because there's a lot of traffic but I insisted because it's so
amazing to be able to show you the features.
Okay, so in this building, which you've watched come online for a
couple of years now, there are actually three different
partners. And it's important to have a
sense of what's going on here. You come in the Town Center, you
might eat lunch, right above you actually are two brand new newly
created research institutes that really form the backbone and
really the major impetus for what's going on in this
building. So I have superimposed over
their relative locations. So on the western side we have
what we call the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
The whole building is the Wisconsin Institutes, plural.
And there's a public institute that's part of the university
called the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
And it's made up of researchers from all different schools and
colleges across campus, cheek by jowl.
There are computer scientists and engineers and biologists,
and that's never been done in a deliberate way on this campus
before. So that's one of the huge
departures. So everyone who works at the
Wisconsin Institute for Discovery is a faculty member
from UW. They're bringing in their
graduate students and postdocs. There are five research leaders
from very different areas, an entire spectrum of research
ranging from nursing to biomedical engineering and
pretty much everything in between, and they're going to
each be recruiting a cadre of three new scientists from,
deliberately, obligatorily, beyond UW to bring new talent to
the university. So that's what going on on the
public Wisconsin Institute for Discovery side right above us.
On the eastern half of the research facility upstairs is
the private nonprofit Morgridge Institute for Research.
And this is also a new research institute that was created to
come into this building and to launch a new path of
investigation, and that institute actually is made up of
people who are not necessarily associated in terms of their
employment with the University of Wisconsin.
So it's a private institute kind of like Salk, or Scripps,
or Broad, or Whitehead. So very much integrated with and
collaborating with, and here to accelerate the missions of the
university but administratively distinct.
So it's very much private and very much has the ability to do
things in a nimble way that may complement what the university
can do. So the idea is sort of a spark
plug for a large public research institution.
So that's the vision behind the creation of the research
enterprise upstairs. What's more of a departure
though is this space that we're in right now: the Town Center.
So from the beginning it's been a part of the vision to have a
full floor dedicated to what we're doing right now: bringing
people in. And then the challenge is how do
we make sure that we bring in, how do we get people to come
back, how do we get people to engage and how do we get this to
be a very fruitful, productive, meaningful part, integrated
part, of the life of this whole enterprise?
And that's really what you're a part of today and that's what
we're starting. Our first day on the job was
last Friday and this will be a work in progress forever.
So that's what we're doing. So the goal of the Town Center,
the mission, is to create a place to gather, share ideas and
celebrate science, creativity and discovery.
We chose these words really carefully because we wanted to
make sure that we deliberately bring in and make a connection
to the arts, to education, to social science, to humanities
and that we really have a very meaningful interdisciplinary
cross-pollination across all walks of the university,
all walks of the community, all ages.
When we talk about who is this for, it's actually for
everybody. I can't think of an age group or
a demographic or a member of the community that we wouldn't want
to bring into this mix somehow. And so that's the challenge that
we have going forward is what are the program structures?
How do we bring people in? How does it go beyond having
a cup of coffee? And so that's been where a lot
of the thinking is and where a lot of the work currently is.
Let's see, I actually skipped a slide.
Shoot. Okay, well, so what I wanted to
do, actually I think the reason I skipped a slide is I'm so used
to showing the elements in a slide.
So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the elements
that we pulled together to make this possible.
And some of the founding vision came from early in the
construction process. George Austin and his team,
project manager George Austin, recruited a nonprofit firm
called the Project for Public Spaces based in New York.
Their work really focuses on helping design spaces like parks
and malls and hospitals, spaces where people come together and
where you really want to create a sense of destination.
And their philosophy around that, and this was very powerful
for the design team, their philosophy is something called
the power of 10. The idea that anytime anybody
comes, they can find 10 different things to do.
So on one day maybe it's have a cup of coffee, meet a friend and
touch a world class microscope. Or come for a lecture and bring
your kids to a science play or a science show and stare at the
running water. And those are three.
But those are the ideas that there are multiple things
because on any given day you feel like doing different
things. And the more you find more
dimension to your experience, the more you're going to come
back. So that's the underlying
philosophy. A lot of that is given
expression in the building itself.
So you can see that there are multiple entrances, there's a
lot of daylight, there's the garden that we talked about and
then there's sort of the programmatic features and the,
maybe you could call them bells and whistles, and I'm actually
hearing the chimes right now so it's right on cue, that will
attract you and bring you back and that we wanted to make
interactive and sort of multifaceted.
So I'll start by talking about the discovery niches, this
concept. I mentioned the Mesozoic niche,
which you can see behind me. It's a touchscreen technology
table that you can interact with.
And over time we'll be building more and more layers of
connectivity in there so that you can research one of the
plants that you see in front of you, learn what that plant is,
when it was around. Then over time you'll be able to
go and see what that plant's descendants are.
And then who on campus is doing research on some of those
descendants and how are some of those descendants in the salad
that you'll find at the restaurant today.
So over time we're going to be building more and more content
so that it becomes an exploration.
When you're in the Mesozoic niche, those chimes that you
heard are actually a part of our Percent for Art Project.
So any state construction comes with a percentage of the
funding, the construction budget that goes for art.
And so we worked with an artist who came up with an interactive
sound and light display that triggers sounds and lights on
the vertical walls that are in the Fibonacci sequence, which is
a mathematical sequence that recurs in nature in the spirals
of sunflowers, things like that. Other discovery niches that we
have and probably our biggest, most exciting and most unusual
is this 3-D niche. So this was conceived in
collaboration with Rock Mackie, who is one of the researchers at
Morgridge, and Kevin Eliceiri, who runs the microscopy core
facility on campus called LOCI. And working with them as well as
with companies that provide the highest caliber microscopes like
Nikon and a local company called Prairie Technologies, we were
able to create this station that has a high resolution microscope
that will actually be a research tool for campus.
So campus researchers are going to bring their specimens here,
and they're going to interact with each other right here in
the midst of this public space. We're going to change out that
science on a regular basis, monthly, weekly, so that you
begin to have scientist of the week and you begin to get a
sense of the whole spectrum of science going on across campus.
And hopefully we'll, and we already have probably about
50 scientists lined up waiting to bring their specimens in.
So it's going to be different every time you come.
We also have what we call a macrostation or a low resolution
microscope. And that's where you can put in
that rose or a penny or a tooth or something that you find.
And that will be a really revelatory moment for kids.
And in the panel that we had at 5:00 o'clock, we had an
elementary school teacher talk about the magic that happens
when a school kid puts something under a microscope and
understands that there's a world that they never even thought of.
And just all the things that get triggered when they do that.
So all of that kind of stuff is going to happen at the 3-D
niche. In addition, there's actually a
working 3-D printer. So a printer that prints 3-D
objects. Instead of images in 2-D on
paper, it prints 3-D objects. That's actually a working
instrument from a rapid prototyping facility that's part
of Morgridge Institute. So machine will be working, it
will be producing things that are part of research and part of
technology development, and it's right here in the public space.
And then our last niche is that media wall across the way.
That is an interactive and you probably had a chance to
experience it. Bucky was standing in front of
it. It was really fun to watch him
make it all ripple. Is it's an interactive,
gesturally activated, basically media portal that will be a
place for us to have art displays and student projects
and further and further information about what's going
on on campus, links to the community, things like that.
So that begins to give you a sense of how we bring the
science into this space. Another key part of bringing
science into the community is what we call our embedded
teaching labs. So up on floors two, three and
four, in the northeast corner, and you see it when you drive by
on University Avenue, you see this beautiful glass space
that's cantilevered out a little bit over the street.
It's a really unusual feature. These are state of the art labs.
They're as sophisticated and nimble and preinvested as the
research labs themselves, but they are dedicated to teaching.
So researchers that work at one of the institutes can't look
over there and say, oh, there's some empty benches.
I'm just going to put my graduate student in there.
Actually there's a separate keyed entry and they won't be
able to do it. So these spaces are dedicated to
teaching. And teaching who?
Teaching K-12 kids, obviously, and we're starting to work with
some of the schools, with DPI and the School of Education on
thinking about after-school activities or even pilot classes
that kids can come in and get some experience in a lab setting
like that. But also teachers.
Teacher education a big focus and a big part of the
partnership that we've been exploring with the School of
Education. Faculty and students often need,
especially in this time of moving technology, need an
opportunity to retool or a take a boot camp or a SWAT class
really on some new technology. And this will be a place where
they can come do that. And my colleague Dr. Rupa Shevde
is going to talk in a minute, and she leads a lot of classes
on stem cell technology and allows researchers from across
campus, and frankly across the country, the world, to come and
learn new techniques, and those spaces are ideal for that.
And then a final category that can use those labs, and this is
something new for campus, is companies that are developing
new technologies. They'll be able to bring their
beta test or their emerging technologies up here.
We'll be able to be sort of a central locus for campus
researchers from all over to come and bring their
experiments, try out the instruments, interact with the
companies so that instrument development can actually be
really responsive to the needs of researchers here at UW.
So these are some of the things that are in the Town Center.
And what I want to do before I turn it over to my colleagues
Rupa Shevde and Susan Millar, we're going to talk more about
the research and institutional outreach elements of Morgridge
and of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, I want to show
you a short video that gives you a sense of the promise that the
Town Center holds and what we're excited about doing with a lot
of members of the community and continuing to build on.
I understand because we have the latest technology it actually
takes a minute to key up this video so just bear with me.
And actually while that's happening this gives me a
perfect opportunity to talk about some of the things that
are coming down the pike. So already we are working on a
bunch of different frameworks to continue this discussion and
bring people in. So we're going to be having,
starting after the new year and the new semester, open houses
for teachers to come in and brain storm.
And we had an impromptu one at the 5:00 o'clock session.
I'm actually hoping tonight after the presentations if we
have some time we can brain storm a little bit about things
that you'd like to see or take your questions.
We are working with partners like the Children's Museum and
the Aldo Leopold Nature Center and Space Place and of course
Science Alliance and Tom Zinnen to create a regular Saturday
science program. Probably won't be every week but
beginning probably once a month in the beginning and then we'll
ramp up and we'll figure out sort of what's the good time,
what's the good audience, what kinds of activities work in this
space. So we're going to be piloting.
All of these pilots and I hope everyone gives us a moment to
figure out how to do all of this because everything that we're
doing is brand new. We want to explore some kind of
Town Center nights or sort of first Fridays kind of program
that would appeal to maybe not so much kids, maybe couples,
maybe singles, maybe life-long learners to come in.
Maybe it's an art and science discussion.
Maybe it's an interaction with cutting-edge technology and a
discussion with the researcher. I talked about the Huddles with
Faculty. WARF has a long-standing program
called the Gilson Lectures which really focus on business
acceleration. We're taking that to all kinds
of new levels. And then finally a science cafe
program where there's an informal kind of a give and take
with a researcher or not necessarily a scientist but a
faculty member or an advanced scholar on campus.
So these are some things that are the works right now that you
can look forward to over the next six months.
We also have some events on the calendar that are very much
up your alley. Darwin Days, which is a
long-standing event, is going to be here this year and is going
to celebrate the Mesozoic garden.
And the fossils in the floor, I don't know if you went on a tour
but there are fossils in the floor.
It's my favorite thing. Every floor tile has fossils.
It's absolutely amazing. Science Expeditions is going to
be here. We're working with campus on
sort of a marquee event, a capstone event through the Go
Big Read program, if you know that book The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks and an interesting discussion around
that. We are partnering with Union
South and the Nelson Institute and the Great Lakes Bioenergy
Research Center on Earth Day on April 20th.
And then very exciting working with Tom Zinnen and a lot of
others on a first ever Wisconsin Science Festival that brings all
the lenses to exploring science: popular film, art, book
discussions, lectures, hands-on activities.
So this will be something that you can look forward to in the
fall. And with that, I'm going to turn
to the video. Is it ready to go?
It's about a four minute video. And then I'm going to turn it
over to Rupa Shevde to talk about the outreach experiences
at the Morgridge Institute.
You grow bacteria in these plates.
I feel it's really important for children to be able to see
researchers actually doing research.
That's why teacher Troy Dassler made a special effort to
take his after-school science club on this unique field trip
to UW Madison. >> Right now it's very difficult
for teachers and for children to find a place, an entry way into
the university and to research. >> It's a big campus and it's
intimidating. >> I want you to stay together
so no one gets lost. >> But it may soon feel more
accessible. >> We think with the Town Center
we're going to help shrink this campus a little bit and bring
people together. >> Organizers want to break open
the world of cutting-edge science by creating a public
space at the heart of a science building.
It's extraordinary that people would devote an entire
floor of a science building to a Town Center.
We have a chance to welcome the entire community.
How you doing buddy? >> As director of community
relations for UW Madison, Dawn Crim knows all about welcoming.
I want to make sure that all the communities in Madison know
that we're building that facility for them.
This was all about bringing people together to do new things
that are greater than the sum of their parts.
The idea is to intermingle students and faculty, families
and scientists, technology and art.
People are going to see that it's all linked.
Tandem Press recently created an exhibit called Tiny: Art From
Microscopes at UW Madison. >> The reaction to the show is
incredible. People really loved this whole
idea of science and art. There will be a very strong
humanities component and that will just be the beginning.
Different parts of campus can come out and also showcase the
work that they're doing. So people can stop at one
location and see a variety of things that are happening on
campus. >> It will open the minds of all
visitors. >> And collaborations between
the business community and scientists will hopefully serve
the outcome. >> To really improve lives, you
need to get the products out in the marketplace.
We've got great science and technology here.
We want people that understand how to put businesses together
to sit down, talk with a researcher and then they can
look for a practical application that improves our lives.
And at the core of it all is the opportunity to engage with
real science. >> It's not a science museum.
We're looking to find a way to make the science that's going on
here accessible to people so that they can think about it,
understand it, have input into it.
We're bringing K-12 kids in, and that's what's amazing about
this. To come into a lab, use
cutting-edge equipment. >> I think to inspire a child,
you need to give them experience that's authentic.
It's not a fake lab set up. It's a real lab where real
research goes on. >> You may be in a situation
that some youngster will come and say, so why do you really
care about this? And it will force you to think
about something that a colleague will never ask you.
Researchers here, children here, and they actually come
together there. That's powerful.
For children to imagine themselves as scientists, they
have to see scientists as real people.
Scientists are cool, they're young, they're women, they're
people from other countries. >> And right now you can't see
anything, right? >> I want them to be able to
dream about being something amazing.
The first critical ingredient is inspiration.
There's lots of different ways, I think, to be inspired to think
about science. I think that instead of making
labs look like some sterile place that few are allowed to
go, that they're just part of this community where research is
over in one end and education the another end and having an
ice cream in another end, I think that's great, I think it
gives the right impression. >> I guess it's been a little
frustrating as a teacher not having the resources that we
need, and I think it's been wonderful that the university is
stepping up to the plate. And it's not just going to be
for people that work at the university.
It's for the middle schooler, it's for the high schooler and
it's for my kids, my kids in my classroom, it's for them.
This Town Center is in the spirit of a long history of the
Wisconsin Idea which has brought government, business, young
people into contact with each other in ways that simply don't
occur at every university. >> When a family is driving in
their car past the Town Center, kids are dreaming.
They're looking at the place wondering what's going on in
there. And the beauty of it is, they
don't have to wonder. We can open the doors and let
them in.
All right, so that gives you a sense of where we hope this
can go, and what I want to do now is take you virtually
upstairs in spirit to talk to Rupa Shevde who heads up the
outreach experiences for the Morgridge Institute for
Research. And I mentioned before, I think
that from the beginning education has been a primary
driver in configuring the whole enterprise, all three parts of
it, but none more so than the Morgridge Institute because John
and Tashia Morgridge have absolutely been insistent and
passionate that the science that goes on in Morgridge makes it
into the hands of all ages. And that's where Rupa is in
charge and is building great things in research.
So I'm going to turn it over to Rupa.
[APPLAUSE] >> Rupa Shevde: Thank you,
Laura. And thank you for all of you
coming here and learning about the exciting things that we are
going to be doing. And just like Laura said, we are
so excited to embark on this new adventure, to be using the
discovery niches, to be using the embedded teaching labs.
My team is called Morgridge Outreach Experiences and one of
the unique things about my team is all of us are scientists
so we do research. We work in the lab every day.
And it has allowed us to simplify the science but not
dilute it and deliver it to various age groups.
And our mission is that we're committed to inspiring
curiosity, imparting knowledge and encouraging creativity in
the minds of tomorrow's scientists.
Our goal of the program is to really make the science that is
going to take place here at the Town Center in the discovery
niches as well as in the embedded teaching labs to the
accessible to everybody, to be exciting and to be relevant to
students of all the ages. So what we try to do is we make
students of all ages, especially the younger students, understand
that science is very relevant to real life and science makes
contributions to real life because if they understand that,
then they understand that if they want to be a part of that,
they will be making a difference in other people's lives and
that's a very powerful thing. We want to always create
excitement about science. We also try very hard to instill
confidence in students because we work with a lot of variety of
students. We work with the underserved
population. We work with rural Wisconsin
kids. And over years we have realized
that they think that campus is not something that they can come
to. They have the fear of the
unknown. They don't think they can
survive. So we let them know that we're
very friendly people, and instead of just trying to say,
well I will go to a community college, and I have nothing
against community college, but instead of going just two blocks
away from where I live, I will dream big and I will go to UW
Madison or I will go to a university on the west coast or
east coast. So by allowing us to expose them
to science, they're also allowing us to, hopefully,
impart that message to them that not only that science is cool
and scientists are just regular people, but really that we
believe in them and that they can do whatever they set their
mind to, they can dream big and we will help them achieve their
dreams. And so we come alongside
teachers and the educators. One of the uniqueness of our
program is we don't say we're the scientists, we know the
science and here it is. We take time.
We work with the teachers. We understand what the teachers'
needs are. And we develop a program that
would work for that particular school or that particular group
because the teachers and the educators are the ones who have
the finger on the pulse of what the students need and what they
would benefit most from. So that is how we develop
programs. We have started working, even
though this building wasn't up and running, we had to start the
programs so we started working in January to create variety of
programs, and in the last six months we have conducted over 40
outreach events and they include field trips so students can come
to our lab on a field trip. If a large group comes, then we
can do simple things because there is a lot of them.
We actually go to schools. Olympus Microscope Company
helped us build a microscope that can be folded into a box,
and we take the microscope to the schools because one of the
frustrations we've had is when we go and talk about stem cells,
everybody wants to see stem cells and at some point a
PowerPoint picture of the stem cells was not enough.
And schools do not have the kinds of microscope, these are
phase contrast microscopes that are very expensive, schools do
not have the budgets. So we had to come up with an
idea. Yes we want to let the students
see the cells, but they all cannot come to our lab because
some of the schools are very far.
And so we decided that we will make every effort to take the
lab to them. And it was wonderful when they
could put a plate of cells under the microscope and look at the
cells. And it was really worth all the
trouble that we went to to design such a microscope.
So we can actually take the lab experience to them.
We have career conferences. We talk to students and teachers
about career choices. We've noticed that a lot of
times students and teachers, they think that there is a
science teacher and there is a scientist.
And they say, we don't want to be either one of them, therefore
we shouldn't even think about science career.
So our goal is to help them understand that there are a
variety of careers between a science teacher and a scientist.
And so we have information on different careers.
We connect them with people on campus if they're interested in
other career choices. We will be having a careers
conference this summer. So we are trying to make sure
that they understand that there are a lot of choices.
We also participate in family science night.
We have teacher training courses.
We have specialized courses that are involved in the
biotechnology sciences. We do after-school enrichment
activities. We actually do a very intense
hands-on lab activity. And we do a variety of science
camps which are two- to four-day camps where students stay on
campus and work in the lab with us.
So they get to experience the college life, so to say, and
also experience what science labs look like.
Some of the camps that we've done in the past, and all this
information is on our website, is a middle school camp called
Generation Exhilaration Camp for future scientists.
This was a camp where we brought 12 students from Atlanta,
Georgia, and paired them with 12 students from the PEOPLE Program
here on UW campus. And these were all underserved
students. So this was a our first
experience with middle school, and there is a wonderful video
on our website, if you get a chance you can see it.
We also do, this will be our fourth year of doing summer
science camp for rural Wisconsin students where four students and
one teacher from five different rural Wisconsin schools come to
us for four days and learn intense, hands-on stem cell
science and all the areas where stem cell science is done,
including engineering, neural cells, cardiomyocytes, heart
muscle cells, regenerative biology, a variety of things.
We also did an enrichment program for one of the schools
on the southwest side of Chicago called the -- Clark Academy.
And the teachers wanted the students to stay after school
for an enrichment program. So we created a curriculum for
them, and as a reward for staying after school for a whole
year they got to come and spend two days in our lab.
So these are just some of the glimpses of things we do.
Now we don't do outreach just in stem cells, we also do outreach
in virology and we will be doing outreach in the next six months
for medical devices as well. This is our website.
We launched the website on May 5th.
We talk about all the challenge areas.
We have a lot of teaching resources that are downloadable
in PDF formats. We have news and features.
We will soon have a place to connect and revisit for students
and teachers, and we will start a "did you know?" series,
which will change every week. So there will be a catch phrase
like did you know, and then it will hopefully hook the students
and teachers in the classroom and they will be able to learn
more. One of the first ones we are
launching is hepatitis C and the next one will be HIV/AIDS.
So those are works in progress. We do work very closely, as
Laura said, with a lot of programs on campus.
And these are some of the partnerships that we've had.
We work with the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center
Outreach on campus. We work with the PEOPLE Program.
We work with Wisconsin Alumni Association to do grandparents
university where grandparents and grandkids come and learn
together. This is a very interesting
program. We work with the School of
Engineering, Science Alliance, UW Madison career services and
student organizations, as well as Susan Millar's group which is
Education Research Challenge Area.
And I'm going to end at that. If anybody has questions or
information. This is our mascot
Stanley Stem Cell. We had to talk about stem cells
and cells in general to very young kids, and so we decided to
have a mascot who has become very popular in the last few
years. So this is Stanley Stem Cell.
And I'm going to end with that. Thank you for your time.
[APPLAUSE]
Susan Millar: I realize it's getting a little late, and I'll
try to make this quick. My name is Susan Millar, and, as
Rupa just said, I'm the leader of the Education Research
Challenge Area. I would just like to clarify
that you'll see the logo up at the top there.
The Education Research Challenge Area is actually part of both
the Morgridge Institute for Research and the Wisconsin
Institute for Discovery. And we are delighted to
collaborate with the Town Center as well.
What the Education Research Challenge Area does is we make
scientific discovery visible and accessible to the public by
creating and studying digital games for learning science.
This is a very different approach than many of you might
have thought an education researcher would bring to this
kind of work. In order to help you understand
why a person who, as Tom Zinnen said when he introduced us
earlier, why a person who has been studying attempts to
improve undergraduate stem education for many, many years,
why would I be doing a research area that's attempting to
develop games for learning science?
Well, because one of the things that I learned in the many
20 years that I studied these efforts is that we as a nation
through the many research efforts that are underwritten
by the National Science Foundation and other groups, we
know a great deal about how to get inquiry-based and really
high quality science and math and engineering learning going.
What we're not very good at is getting it widespread so that
many, many people, and not just the people who are able to
benefit from pilot programs, so that many people can benefit
from this. So when I had the opportunity to
do this job, I looked around and I became aware that where our
young people already are is in games.
They're playing games. And, actually, many, many adults
are playing games. So that kind of solves
the go to scale problem. They're already playing them.
And then I thought through this question of well, what is it
that kids are doings and adults are doing in games.
Well, you get into the game, you observe, you try to figure out
what's going on, you look at simulated events and then you
take action and then you do that cycle over and over.
Well guess what? That is the very same
problem-solving process that goes on in science.
And so we can do the problem-solving process that
goes on in the labs in places like this and all over the
campus and elsewhere, of course, in the nation, right inside of
games. So what we've decided to do is
to develop games that have topics that are proposed by the
engineers, the medical researchers, the computer
scientists and the biologists, primarily at first here in the
Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.
And as we go on, we'll be looking for game ideas from
scientists and engineers and so forth beyond this particular
area. And then what we do is we also,
in selecting the games that we decide to focus our energies on
and our resources on, we're trying to focus on areas of
critical social importance so that we can provide the best
public resources to address the challenges that face us in our
society and also to identify the most promising opportunities.
We also, and as those of you who may have been here in some of
the other presentations that have taken place since the
Discovery Institute opened, we are using a deeply
multidisciplinary approach in designing these games.
We attempt to create a synergistic marriage between the
excitement of engaging game play, the stuff that keeps your
kids playing games that you might not want them to be
playing for many, many hours into the night, with valued
science content, ways of thinking and acting in science
labs. So thus it is that our research
and development teams are including learning scientists
from the College of Education over here and elsewhere, game
designers and people who study how people learn in games,
education researchers like myself, artists, and of course
computer programmers who do a lot of the work inside of the
digital gaming. We also are incorporating people
who are experts in how people learn science, biologists,
medical researchers, computer scientists, engineers, very,
very interdisciplinary. And these people come from both
the University of Wisconsin's Wisconsin Center for Education
Research in the School of Education and others in the
School of Education, from, of course, the UW's Institute for
Discovery and of course the Morgridge Institute for
Research. So our games invite people to
play roles as scientists. For example, you might play the
role of a scientist or medical practitioner who's interpreting
ambiguous scientific data visualizations.
We already have a prototype game called Oncology which you can
find in the east conference room on the second floor.
I'm going to be quiet so that you can listen to this for just
a couple of minutes. This enables you to understand
how it is that medical practitioners identify cancer
cells.
For the younger people in the audience we're hoping
to get this on an iPad relatively quickly...
Okay, so another one of our games, which is
prototyped and on display upstairs, invites people to play
the role of instead of being a scientist, this time you're a
virus seeking to infect and replicate a living cell.
This game is called Virulent.
One of the wonderful things about this game which came out
of a discussion between our education researchers and game
designers and John Yin, who is the Wisconsin Institute for
Discovery research biologist, is that this has drawn a number of
different scientists together, so we were able to figure out
how to make this happen.
I'm pleased to say that the young people who have tried
this, the parents have trouble getting them away from it.
So our goal is to engage players in these scientific worlds
to experience the fun of problem-solving, the same kind
of fun that drives scientists to come to their labs day after day
and stay late hours. They will also be experiencing
learning from factual information, there's a lot of
factual information in Virulent. I don't know that much about
cells still, and I'm just beginning to figure out all the
stuff that's in there. Concepts, processes, skills and
also the values of the scientific enterprise which I
know many people who come to science lectures Wednesday night
care about a great deal. Another idea that we're pursuing
is using our games to invite players into what are called
professional amateur communities.
These are communities where if you become good enough at a
particular type of scientific activity such as contouring
those cancerous tumors in the Oncology game, you may be
invited, on the basis of your performance because you get
leveled up in games as many of you know, to contribute your
contours or whatever the game is about to be aggregated into the
highest quality optimized results that might be offered to
medical practitioners who in turn would actually potentially
use that in order to improve the diagnoses that they're doing
with real patients. So I'm just going to finish here
with a quick thanks to the team that built Virulent and
Oncology. Two of them, Rich Halverson
and Kurt Squire are faculty in the School of Education here
at UW-Madison and are just fantastic researchers and
understand about learning and gaming.
And then you can see the wonderful other members
of our team, Nate Patterson, Ben Shapiro, Mike Beall,
Kevin Harris, Sarah Chu, Henrich Soebke and Javier Corredor.
So I am realizing that the hour is late and you all have been
probably sitting here long enough.
It's pushing 8:00 o'clock. I'm going to turn this back over
to Laura for a little bit of opportunity to hear from you.
Thanks. [APPLAUSE]