This session will introduce students to the field of tissue engineering. They will learn the principles behind how biological tissues are made in labs and what cutting-edge research is happening today. We will conduct a bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay, which is a colorimetric assay used in laboratory settings to quantify total protein in a biological sample. Completing this assay provides a great opportunity for students to gain the practical skill of using micropipettes- which are tools widely used across many scientific fields. To conduct the BCA assay, the two given reagents will be mixed together in a particular ratio to make a ‘working reagent’. The working reagent will then be added to the samples and standards in a 96 well plate. The samples will turn a purple color after a few minutes, allowing the students to estimate how much protein is in each sample by comparing it to a standard curve. This will also help to hone their abilities to follow protocols, analyze data, and draw conclusions from their experimental results, all of which are skills necessary to becoming a tissue engineer.

In this activity, students will learn about the properties of polymers, what kinds of polymers we interact with every day, and the applications of polymers. To understand these concepts, students will make their own slime and then their own bouncy balls. Students will be able to identify the various roles each substance plates in the creation of the slime and the bouncy ball, as well as the different properties of the polymers that comprise both creations.

In this activity, students will walk through a data analysis activity involving historical hurricane records and includes topics such as plotting, filtering, and basic statistics related to storms. Students will formulate questions about hurricanes and how climate change may impact them. Students will be able to modify the code to answer questions they may have on the behavior of hurricanes.
Depending on the background of the student group, this can be made more or less complex. For this reason, this activity can be geared towards generally for students from 6-12.

In this activity, students will learn how to use mathematical optimization to aid in image summarization. In image summarization, there is a large collection of images and the goal is to find a small summary that consists of representative images. For example, for a collection with many images of a mountain and many images of a beach, a good summary would only keep a single mountain image and a single beach image. The activity will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on how to formulate the problem of image summarization as a mathematical problem. The second part will focus on an algorithm for solving image summarization.

In this activity, students will follow an instructor-led disassembly of a desktop computer (we will supply a small number of discarded computers to be used for this exercise). During the disassembly, we will identify the various components (e.g., disk drive, power supply, motherboard, memory, CPU) and talk about their roles. Students will then participate in a discussion about why things are done the way they are (e.g., why do we need a power supply? What's the difference between memory and a disk drive).

In this activity, students will take part in a demonstration of the processes used to purify drinking water in rural areas. Students will receive a brief overview of a typical drinking water treatment train, illustrating how their drinking water is kept safe in New York City. Students will then take a sample of contaminated water and add a coagulant/oxidizer powder which will lead to the water being safe to drink (though the students will not be allowed to drink it).

In this activity, students will form teams to design a robot with the provided supplies. The teams will then compete with their designed robots to see which robot can cross the finish line first. Through this activity, students will learn the components of a robot and how they are used from day-to-day activities to industry applications.

In this activity, students will learn the fundamentals of batteries, what they are made of, and how sound waves are affected by battery materials. Batteries are key energy storage technologies for our portable electronics and electric vehicles but are very complex devices. They are difficult to measure because the materials are enclosed inside a rigid container. Ultrasounds can be used to send sound waves through the battery to understand its state of health and mechanical properties. Students will observe how the sound wave changes as it is passed over the battery.

VIRTUAL ONLY In this activity, students will understand how excess carbon dioxide is related to climate change and global warming. Students will evaluate their own Carbon Footprint and contextualize it on a global scale using an Excel-based spreadsheet. Students will learn pathways to utilize carbon dioxide to mitigate global warming and hear about some ground-breaking research in this field.