Public Outreach

Center for Systems Biology (Institute for Systems Biology)

To fundamentally change the way that K-12 science is taught and learned in high schools, the Center has established strong community partnerships with high school teachers and students through two leveraged, inquiry-based, science teaching programs. The first is through the Center for Inquiry Science (CIS), Science Educators Network (SEN) program, which through Center support developed and incorporated “leadership training” into K-12 inquiry-based science education. Leadership training includes classroom teachers, principals, curriculum directors and assistant superintendents, and is critical in educational reform as it is the leadership who will support and implement policy changes leading to sustainability. Since 2007, 57 science teachers representing 17 school districts participated in the SEN program. Further, 211 participants from 19 school districts participated in Networking Forums.

Since 2006, the Center has supported a high school educator and an education coordinator to disseminate hands-on, inquiry-driven, and standards-based high school curricula. There are currently five education modules in various stages of development. With the support of Center funds, these modules (funded by NSF) have been disseminated to a total of 342 classrooms, over 9000 students. Since 2007, over 200 teachers have received guidance through direct training.

ISB Annual Symposium. The Symposium is a two-day international event that gathers influential researchers who are transforming biology into an integrative discipline. Past symposia have discussed the relationships between systems biology and human disease, emerging technologies, computational challenges, the cell, and global health. Speakers have presented advances in proteomics, imaging, nanotechnology, high-throughput data analysis, network inference, network structure/function and dynamics, quantitative genetics, immunity, infectious disease, and the genetics and genomics of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The 2009 Symposium included the opening keynote from David Botstein; PI of the NIGMS funded Center for Quantitative Biology at Princeton University.

Center website. In 2006 we released a prototype of our Center website to disseminate general knowledge about our newly formed Center. In 2007, the website was expanded significantly to include detailed pages on the Center’s Aims, research projects, the Core facilities, publicly available Center resources (with PubMed/PubMed Central publication URLs), Center education and outreach programs, Center Executive Committee (with contact emails), Center Scientific Advisory Board members (and their respective areas of expertise, and Faculty appointments), a table of the entire scope of the Center research and education programs with contact emails and, finally, approximately 105 Center publications (with with PubMed/PubMed Central publication URLs). We use Webalizer, a free open source server log file analysis program, to provide usage statistics for the Center website.

Interactions with the other National Centers for Systems Biology. In 2009, our Center volunteered to host the annual all Centers meeting and, in July 2010, we hosted 103 scientists and students from 11 National Centers for a two day meeting. Since 2006, our Center has supported travel for at least four attendees to the annual all Centers meeting, including our Center Director or Associate Director (Lee Hood, John Aitchison), Center program manager/education and outreach coordinator (Jennifer Dougherty), senior investigators, scientists, computational biologists, software engineers, and Postdoctoral Fellows, graduate students, and research associates.

Chicago Center for Systems Biology

Informal Science Education
Informal science education learning experiences are designed to increase interest, engagement, and understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by individuals of all ages and backgrounds. Informal learning happens throughout people’s lives in a highly personalized manner based on particular needs, interests, and past experiences. This type of multi-faceted learning is voluntary, self-directed, and often mediated within an engaging social context. It provides an experiential base and motivation for further activity and subsequent learning.

Public Seminars
Seminars for the public are produced for Saturday attendances. The goal of the seminars is to make systems biology accessible to general audiences.

Exhibit
The Center is working on a conceptual plan to produce a traveling interactive exhibit about systems biology.

Duke Center for Systems Biology

The DCSB has developed a website to foster international interactions among systems biology centers, institutes and departments world-wide. Sysbionetwork.org lists current events of interest to the systems biology community as well as contact information for many other systems biology research centers across the globe.

New Mexico Center for the Spatiotemporal Modeling of Cell Signaling

The Art of Systems Biology and Nanoscience: April 01 & 02, 2011

The Annual two-day long Art of Systems Biology and Nanotechnology event at the Santa Fe Complex (sf_x) features public lectures on quantitative biology and nanotechnology, workshops for kids and an exhibition of stunning digital and interactive art based on imaging, simulation and modeling.

For more information: Visit the Santa Fe Complex, Visit STMC

Systems Biology Center New York (SBCNY)

Systems Biology Center New York website: The Center’s website (www.sbcny.org) serves as the primary outlet for the dissemination of software tools, datasets, and dynamical models, all of which are available in the Resources section of the website. All tools are freely available and the source code for software is deposited in Google Code or SourceForge. In addition, the Center publishes its software resources in the National Centers for Biomedical Computing’s (NCBC) Biositemaps system. The Education section of the SBCNY website contains information about various education and training opportunities offered within the Center. In addition, the Education section of the website hosts lecture materials for the following courses: Pharmacogenomics, Applied Mathematics for Biologists, Systems Biology–Biomedical Modeling and Systems Biomedicine: Molecules, Cells and Networks. The Events section lists upcoming and past events plus reports from workshops. We are currently using Google Analytics, a free web-based application offered by Google, to measure visitor activity on the Center website.

Systems Biology Center New York (SBCNY) Annual Symposium: The public outreach activities of the Center include the annual SBCNY symposium held at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. Speakers for the Thursday, December 1, 2011 symposium included:

Marc W. Kirschner PhD (Keynote speaker) – Harvard Medical School
Cristina Alberini, PhD – New York University
Andrea Califano, PhD – Columbia University
Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD – Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Alexander Hoffman, PhD – UC San Diego, San Diego Systems Biology Center
Ravi Iyengar, PhD – Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Systems Biology Center New York
Rima Kaddurah-Daouk, PhD – Duke University Medical Center
Robert Lefkowtiz, MD – Duke University Medical Center
Michael Snyder, PhD – Stanford University

Systems Biology–Biomedical Modeling Course: The September 13 2011 online issue of Science Signaling is the first of three issues containing Teaching Resources related to a course in systems biology. Members of the Systems Biology Center New York developed a course at Mount Sinai School of Medicine that introduces first-year graduate students to computational principles and approaches. There will be a total of 12 Teaching Resources published in sequential issues of Science Signaling starting with the September 13 issue. Each of the Teaching Resources will provide lecture notes, slides, problem sets, and answer keys.

Systems Biology Center New York Seminars and Workshops: In addition to the annual symposium, public outreach activities include: a seminar series featuring leaders in systems biology and workshops on the use of specific software tools and resources developed within the Center. Information about upcoming/past seminars and workshops can be found on the Events and Research Outreach sections of our website.