Seventh Graders Explore Frontiers Of Science At Shady Grove Life Sciences Center

Learning About Chemical Reactions

Today, Johns Hopkins University, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, and other companies and organizations in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center held the second annual Frontiers in Science and Medicine Day. All seventh graders from Rockville’s Julius West Middle School and Montgomery Village Middle School traveled to the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center for lab tours in a variety of company labs and hands-on science experiments at the JHU Montgomery County Campus.

Frontiers in Science and Medicine Day is an opportunity to energize middle school students about exciting career opportunities in science, medicine, and research to build a future workforce for the science, engineering, and healthcare industries in this region. The event is also an opportunity to highlight the incredible scientific research and healthcare delivery happening every day in Montgomery County and especially in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center.

Here’s a conversation I had with Dennis Hanson, president of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital — whom, I am told, was instrumental in the creation of Science Day.

I can tell you, the morning was a hoot — and important for the future of our nation, if I may wax poetic for a moment. A key issue today is a lack of scientific and math literacy among youth. This isn’t just a matter of not knowing how to find a square root, how evolution works, or what Avogadro’s Number is. It’s vitally important that we train tomorrow’s engineers and scientists today. At the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center, I saw young scientists working on new cancer-beating medicines, working with DNA, developing new ways to handle remote medicine, and create new robots. They’re young scientists — but we need to be training up their replacements right now.

Using Remote Manipulators To Make Sutures

Cells In The Microscope

Craig Thomas, an organic chemist at NIH’s Genomics Lab, puts the issue very eloquently:

Science Day is a chance for seventh graders to get exposed to science outside of the classroom, in a real lab, in situations where it might actually be applied. Some students on today’s trip will be bitten by the science bug. In fact, I saw one student hanging back after his class left a demonstration, talking to the organic chemist about what it was like to do what he did.

The future is looking bright.

Everyone Wore Gloves

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