Alex Schier and Tessa Montague shown here with the students from the Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn, NY
During the first week of April, middle school students from Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brooklyn, NY visited the Biolabs for a special science workshop as part of a full day of activities at Harvard.
The students learned about zebrafish embryogenesis by setting up mating experiments in the zebrafish facility, collecting embryos, and watching the beating hearts of 2 day old fish under the microscope, including those with fluorescent blood cells. Tessa Montague, a graduate student in Alex Schier’s lab, who organized the workshop with Susan Johnson, Tara Bennett and Alia Qatarneh from the Life Sciences Outreach program and neuroscience graduate student Ivan Santiago, says: “The students were fantastic. They were bright, animated and inquisitive. It was an honor to work with them.”
Tessa hopes this event will catalyze other scientists to reach out to local schools so that more students may have the opportunity to become scientists for a day.
