Missouri S&T Summer Camp: Engineering with Biology Recently Updated

What grand problems would you like to solve? A new technology to detect chronic disease? Clean up the environment? Feed the world? Campers will learn how synthetic biology can be used to solve some of the grand challenges of our lifetime. 

Through hands-on laboratory projects, campers will explore how living organisms can be designed and modified to produce valuable chemicals and how they can control that process. Campers will select challenges they would like to solve and come up with solutions that combine the worlds of biology and engineering.

Campers will learn the fundamentals of synthetic biology through hands-on activities to:

• Design and test genetic systems and optimize their performance
• Evaluate alternative genetic systems to determine the best solution to a problem
• Compare the results of putting genes into different cells
• Explore the use of yeast to make vitamin-enriched food
• Model an engineered biological system using an electronics building kit
• Learn about and debate the societal impacts of synthetic biology
• Participate in a design competition to propose and plan solutions to problems of their choosing