Outreach

On October 5th 2019, graduate students Lingjie Zhou and Brittany Sprecher from the Lin Lab and Matthew Sasaki from the Dam Lab participated in the first annual Science Day at the Public Library of New London. There they met and helped build DNA molecules out of candy with library patrons.

 

PhD Candidates Matthew Sasaki and Brittany Sprecher building DNA out of candy with patrons of the New London Public Library

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Lin Lab has always been very proud to participate in the Project Oceanology Annual Marine Science day and in 2018 and 2019 we participate by creating a new hands on activity of isolation DNA from strawberries!  The best part about the workshop is the students get to keep the DNA as a necklace.  This is an all hands on deck sort of activity they brings the entire lab and visiting scholars together for some fun outreach.

 

Visting scholar Dr. Nanjing Ji helping a Marine Science participant extract DNA from strawberries.

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Associate research professor Dr. Huan Zhang teamed up with Dr. George McManus to discover the identity of a very large fish. Their results were published in the local news The Day on February 26th, 2019.

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

On September 15-16th Associate research professor Dr. Huan Zhang and two PhD students, Brittany Sprecher and Cong Wang, participated in a state-wide biodiversity madness weekend named BioBlitz. They were in charge of identifying as many plankton species as possible for 24 hours. On the morning of the second day a large group of citizens, including children, had an opportunity to come and learn about the biodiversity in their local park and participated in discovering algae at the Lin Lab table. Below is a video made by the UConn Arts Department about the event.

 

BioBlitz from TimmyMiller on Vimeo.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Two PhD students, Lingjie Zhou and Brittany Sprecher, along with Susan Smith (PhD candidate in the Dr. McManus lab) participated in the Women in Science Day at Mystic Aquarium (August 21, 2018) by making DNA out of candy and having a station to view plankton.

 

PhD Candidate Susan Smith talking about microscopic plankton with aquarium patrons

 

DNA molecule made out of candy

–> Check out the Mystic Aquarium Article for more information:
https://www.mysticaquarium.org/2018/08/22/mystic-aquarium-hosts-successful-women-in-science-day/