BioBus!

Hop on the BioBus!

Have you ever used a scanning electron microscope? Taken pictures of your own cells at such high magnification that you can see their compartments? Met someone who used those tools as a professional scientists? Most of us can’t say ‘yes’ to any of these questions. Thanks to the work of the BioBus thousands of kids or New York City and across the country can say they’ve done it all.

The BioBus is a public outreach project focused on giving children first hand experience using high-tech microscopy to see how real cell biology work is done. It has been enthusiastically embraced by the schools it visits, enjoyed collaboration with leaders in academic research and gained the support of the biotech industry. The center piece of the BioBus project is in-fact a bus. It has been adapted to contain a top of the line microscopes but is still mobile and brings high tech labs to low-income schools. This gives many students a chance they might not otherwise have to interact with real scientists and understand how biological research is done. This innovative educational tool started as the dream of a single young man who wanted to bring the joy and excitement of scientific discovery he found as a PhD student to all people. Dr. Ben Dubin-Thaler is still the Chief Scientist of the BioBus and was kind enough to take the time to speak with me about his work.

His enthusiasm was immediately evident as the first several minutes of our conversation were about my own work. We had plenty to talk about as I am currently working on a PhD in cell biology and use microscopy almost everyday. Far from having taken at step back from the scientific community he was curious about the technical detail of my imaging tools and the ideas I explore. This intrinsic ease of conversation and infections passion have no doubt aided him in and garnering the wide rang of support and success the BioBus enjoys.

WP: You have a strong background in research, bud did you have any previous work to prepare you for the non-scientific aspects of running the BioBus?

Ben: I had a very fruitful Ph.D., co-authoring 9 peer-reviewed journal articles. I’ve always loved teaching and won awards for undergraduate instruction and volunteered at neighborhood after-school programs (while a graduate student), where I experienced the joys and challenges of working with low-income communities in Harlem.”

WP: When did you first start thinking about running a public education program?

Ben: “Having been born into a family of physicists and biologists, I’ve grown up being confronted by the mystery and beauty of the natural world and was always encouraged to play and experiment. While in graduate school , I noticed that when other people had the chance to play and experiment, they became excited and happy about science. This contrasts what often happens while sitting through lectures or reading textbooks. The BioBus is my way of bringing the fun and excitement of scientific experimentation and play to all people.”

The progress on this goal has been tremendous. From the bus’s christening in March 2008 in Brooklyn the bus has visited over 300 schools and had more than 50,000 people view or perform experiments. During the school year they visit a school almost every day. Most of these schools are in low-income areas of New York but the bus has gone on cross-country tours and visited other cities in the north-east. They have programs for all grades kindergarten through 12^th .

Teachers at these schools report that the BioBus visits always cause quite a stir, with kids talking about the visits for weeks afterwards. Ben has seen this himself when they return to schools and students can tell him what they learned and did over a year ago. There has been a focus on the low-income areas because kids there generally have less exposure to professional scientists. More often than not, the people running the BioBus are the first actual biologists, or researchers of any sort, students have met. Getting this exposure can trigger the realization that science isn’t the domain inconceivable geniuses, but that “science can be done by everyone” and it’s actually “not to difficult”.  This idea and interest in science really does take hold. Surveying students before and after they participate shows twice as many students think science is something they would want to do as a career. For students in high school they know this can directly translate to education choices. Ben recalls being contacted by one student who enrolled as cell biology major at university and cited the BioBus as her inspiration to do so!

It isn’t just kids whose lives are touched by their work. In addition to their school visits, the bus appears at multiple public events each month where they are open to the public. Adults often enter the bus expecting some cute ‘kids only’ type simple displays; they then realize what fantastic devices are being made publically available.  Parents then begin playing with the microscopes and asking questions as they realize that biology is really something they should be paying to too.

Microscopy experiments have many unique attributes that make them particularly fascinating to new scientists. They are often very easy to use and the time-scale of experiments are conducive to quick projects. Where much of biochemistry requires hours of letting chemicals mix, light microscopes can give results as quickly as you can load slides. The scale of view can take people from their usual perspective on objects down to 100 times magnification allowing for a continuous shift to seeing finer and finer details never before appreciated. So why aren’t there microscopes in every school? They can be extremely expensive. The microscope I use in my research cost nearly half a million dollars and less sophisticated scopes still costing tens of thousands of dollars. For this reason I was very curious how a small non-profit organization could afford to load such things on a bus and haul it around New York.

WP: How did you go about getting your initial funding?

Ben: “In the beginning funding was very small! I built the BioBus for under $50,000. This money came primarily from donations from friends, family, and colleagues who believed in me and what I was doing. I kept costs very low by repurposing and reusing much of he material for building the bus, as well as the bus itself. Which is a 1974 city bus! We also had early support from Olympus {a microscope engineering and manufacturing group}, who donated $20,000 worth of microscopes in the first year.”

From these simple beginning Ben has obtained a great deal of collaboration and support from academics, the biotech industry and the general public. Much of this support comes from biologists he met while attending high profile research conferences such as the annual American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB). Within New York, collaborators at New York University (NYU) in the materials research center provided the project with office space. Other universities which donate materials, lesson plans and volunteers include the Rockefeller University and Columbia University. Among his supporters is Nobel Prize winning biologist ** who pioneered the use of the green-fluorescent protein (GFP) and thus revolutionized modern live-cell microscopy. She works with the small transparent work C. elegans to observe the location and function of specific proteins in living animals.

Makers of microscopes and developers of have also caught onto just how important this work is. Hundreds of thousands of dollars with of microscopes have now been donated to the BioBus, the best of which are more powerful than those Ben used for his own graduate degree! These include a stereo-zoom  microscope which allows for continuous increase from 10 to 80 times actual size from Zeiss and a scanning electron microscope from TopCom* which allows for imaging of the surfaces common objects to near unrecognizable detail. These individuals, schools and companies recognize how vital it is for the next generations to have an appreciation for science and see that amazing discoveries are well within their capabilities.

So what is next for the BioBus? would like to get further integrated into the experience of low-income schools education plan to keep giving students the inspirational opportunity to. New projects include a remote controlled robotic microscope from Nikkon. This allows for kids from to do experiments over the internet from where ever they are. As a Nonprofit largely volunteer run organization, they are constantly working just to obtain ample funding to keep their current projects funded. Many of the students attend schools that can’t afford the supplies needed for a visit. If you are interested in their work, try volunteering on the BioBus or donating to theorganization. If you happen to be a researcher yourself, ask if you can volunteer time or donate materials. You can also look to see if any other members of the Mobile Lab Coalition are in your area to support similar work in your community. 

I’ll end this entry the way I ended the interview, with a feel good question about his favorite moments and reflections inspired by his work.

Ben: “We spent five weeks at Lefferts Garden Charter School in Brooklyn this spring. At the end of the class, 25 elementary school students spontaneously gave Latasha and me and giant group hug! Those kids learned how to use a $75,000 electron microscope and we’ve heard from their teachers and their principal how amazing the experience has been. It’s great to be able to have this kind of impact on students who otherwise might never use a microscope or never meet a professional scientists. These are the kids who are going to make the discoveries and create the cities of the future that are greener, healthier, more just; and they are going to do it by harnessing the power of science and scientific thinking.”