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OpenLabWare (OLW)
This website from HHMI Professor and Investigator Catherine Drennan provides educators and students a window into cutting-edge scientific research at MIT. The website is comprised of individual modules, each with a high-impact journal article as the focal point, supported by research summaries, glossaries, primary research materials (such as laboratory notebook pages), and video interviews. By highlighting each aspect of research, including the planning and execution of experiments, data collection and analysis, evaluation of scientific hypotheses, and the human element, the modules communicate the challenges and joys of scientific discovery as experienced by the researcher. The audience for OLW includes teachers, who can use these research examples in the classroom, and students with little or no research experience who want to better understand what it means to be a research scientist. The three modules currently available (on Aflatoxin, Optical Trapping, and Protein Caging) are at the interfaces of biology and chemistry, engineering, and physics. Nine additional modules (including research in mathematics and materials science) and a more teacher-friendly user interface will be introduced within the next few months.
An Optical Trap
A research question on this website asks: How does one combine optical tweezer force spectroscopy and single molecule flourescence spectroscopy to study a biological molecule's force exertion and configuration changes?
Media: Web pageHHMI Professor: Catherine L. Drennan, Ph.D.
Award Years: 2006
Summary: Catherine L. Drennan, Ph.D., is an HHMI Professor and an HHMI Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research uses X-ray crystallography to study the structure and function of metalloproteins. Her HHMI-funded initiatives include:
- A freshman chemistry course designed to excite undergraduates about chemistry and demonstrate the connection between chemistry and biological processes. This interdisciplinary course includes problem set questions that have biological relevance and touch on research conducted in the MIT chemistry department;
- A training program for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in interdisciplinary teaching that includes a week-long summer boot camp to show teaching assistants how to apply chemical principles to multiple fields and help them incorporate biological examples into their teaching of chemistry;
- The development of the MIT Undergraduate Biochemistry Association (MUBA), a group that helps compensate for the lack of a formal biochemistry program at MIT; and
- The Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Chemical Biology, a 10-week program to encourage undergraduates with quantitative backgrounds to conduct research in biology laboratories and to encourage biology students to conduct research in chemistry or physics laboratories.