BioBus - Driving Social Change Through Scienc

The bio bus is a mobile science laboratory. We travel around New York City and the country bringing students hands on science education. We have microscopes on board and what we do when the students come on the bio bus is actually show them a cell on a slide. We put it on the microscope and they see with their own eyes. What a real nucleus looks like. But a real cell membrane looks like. They can even take their own cells and swab them onto the microscope and see that their own cells have all these parts. We are trying to give students a real science experience that they wouldn't normally get in school. We had a slide of dragonfly larvae. A lie is still on the slide. Kids were amazed and stuff that they don't know, but it's all around them. Get a bio bus for rocks. Awesome. My name is Benjamin dubin Taylor, and I have my PhD in cell biology. I graduated from Columbia University two years ago, and since then, I founded and have been running the bio bus project. N is an excellent teacher he's funny. He knows really get you into involved, you know? Ben is very enthusiastic. You can't not get excited about what he's actually teaching you. The response to the bio bus has been amazing. Students come on that never even have considered a science career and they see they see science is something that's actually fun and something that they might actually be able to do. Other students who already know that they're interested in science also really good excited because it's the first time that they've been able to use really research grade equipment. The bio bus travels to a school. We stay in front of the school anywhere from one day to an entire week. They get to see cool things on the microscope, like protozoa, swimming around, or maybe DNA. And we try to foster their excitement in science and get them pumped up about microscopes. We're also providing students with scientific role models. Myself and the other visiting scientists on the bio bus show students that scientists can be young, can be really passionate about their work and are really interested in helping society. Get over that barrier that says it's boring, it's difficult. A question of passive learning, this very tedious way of teaching is the biggest problem in why people think that science is a difficult and be boring. What we do is bring students on and give them a chance to explore the microscopical world around them. They get to do their own experiments. They get to look at their data on computers because we have digital cameras attached to all the microscopes. So the bio bus is really bringing a hands on lab experience to students who otherwise wouldn't normally have that. The bus is almost completely carbon neutral through our green technology. We have solar panels that cover the entire roof. In addition, we have a wind turbine on front. So when the sun isn't shining, hopefully there's a nice wind coming through and we can make electricity from the wind. The engine of the bio bus has been converted to Greece. So we can actually collect all of our fuel from waste from restaurants. So the teachers and the administrators from the schools have been really thrilled with the reaction of the students. Just the day that they're on the bio bus, but also after they leave, I heard from teachers that the students are just really much more excited about science. And I think that the fact that we've been invited back to every school that we visited so far really speaks to how effective the bio bus has been.