BioBuilder [Mīkstie vāki]

Natalie Kuldell is an Instructor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT as well as Founder and President of the BioBuilder Educational Foundation. She is an invited speaker at meetings all over the country, ranging from the TEDxBermuda conference in 2013 to national meetings for educators such as NSTA and scientists such as AAAS. Her expertise in synthetic biology and education as well as her scientific background have led to the publication of numerous articles and books. Recent articles include ones that focus on curricular content in synthetic biology, the evaluation of student design competitions, and the public's engagement with biological engineering. Her books include "Genome Refactoring" which she co-authored with Neal Lerner, and an compendium called, "Zinc Finger Proteins: From Atomic Contact to Cellular Function" that she co-edited with Shiro Iuchi. She graduated in 1987 Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University with a BA in Chemistry and received her PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University in 1994. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, she joined the faculty at Wellesley College where she taught and developed curriculum in the Department of Biological Sciences. In 2003 she was recruited to MIT as they were launching a new major (Course 20) and new department in Biological Engineering. Her leadership in curriculum development and undergraduate education helped position MIT's program as a prime example of interdisciplinary engineering education, particularly in the area of synthetic biology. Serving as associate director of education for an NSF Engineering Research Center grant, Dr. Kuldell collaborated with award winning high school teachers to collect her MIT synthetic biology teaching materials into modular curricular units appropriate for high school and early college settings. The resulting curriculum, and the non-profit organization that sustains it, is housed at BioBuilder.org. Dr. Kuldell is spending her sabbatical year (2013-2014) as a visiting scholar with the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement, applying the SENCER model for teaching and learning to engineering education in high school and college settings. Kathryn M. Hart is a research instructor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University in Saint Louis and a Master Teacher for the BioBuilder Educational Foundation. She helped develop an intensive lab techniques course for undergraduates at the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), and she teaches professional development and student workshops for BioBuilder. Karen Ingram is an artist who uses design and creative direction to promote scientific awareness. A veteran in the world of digital design, Ingram has worked for Campfire, McCann Erikson, and UNICEF, to name a few. Her work has appeared in many publications including Die Gestalten (Berlin), Scientific American, and The FWA, where she was named a "Digital Pioneer." She's written tutorials on digital design for Computer Arts magazine and New Riders publications. Rachel Bernstein writes about all areas of science for educational and journalistic venues. She has written news articles for Science, Nature, Cell, and the Los Angeles Times and contributes to the online educational resource Visionlearning. In all of her work she aims to inform and educate by entertaining and telling engaging stories. She also has experience as an editor for PLOS ONE, the largest peer-reviewed journal in the world. A biophysical chemist by training, she received a B.A. in Chemistry in 2005 from University of Pennsylvania, where she also minored in English. In 2011 she completed a Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley.