Project Based Learning
The Live Cell Biotechnology Discovery Lab is a maker space dedicated to creating the next generation of technologies for remote education. Since 2020, UC Santa Cruz has collaborated with schools both locally and internationally to incorporate our cloud-enabled labs in the classroom.
The technologies we have designed will create access to hands-on laboratory experience at the scale needed to adequately provide the next generation of scientists and engineers with the skillsets they will need to craft solutions to some of our planet’s most pressing challenges.
Impact on students
“It was amazing watching the students light up as they performed science experiments for the first time… This course inspired many students to start doing research in computational neuroscience, and even inspired some to pursue PhDs.”
-Matthew Elliott, Graduate Researcher and Teaching Assistant, UCSC
Our technologies are making it possible for highschools, community colleges, and universities to provide their students to conduct real hands-on experiments that they would not otherwise have the resources and staff to offer. An initial feedback analysis has found that working with our technologies had a large influence on how students saw themselves in relation to STEM professionals.
Engaging in project-based learning through our cloud-based technologies is helping students to feel like they can be a part of the STEM research community. Watch more videos from students on our UCSC/ Alisal Collaboration Playlist
After these early collaborations allowing high school students to use microscopy on autocultured organisms/cells, we expanded to bring experiments on resource-demanding organoids to college classrooms, equipping students with experience and skills that are in high demand in the biotech industry.
Lab-on-a-chip
Learning simple code through lab-on-a-chip teaching experiences
Students remotely operated optofluidic chips that were based on the UCSC campus, allowing them to learn simple coding as they executed their experiments.
Progress and final results were available online in real-time.
Please contact us (livecell@ucsc.edu) about collaborations and your ideas to take advantage of our cloud-enabled experimental setups for education.
Let us know how our technology can fit your research/ teaching
Learn more about our cloud-based technologies
News from the Discovery Lab
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Baskin Engineering will lead regional hub of NSF Engineering PLUS Alliance to serve underrepresented students, faculty, and staff
Building on longstanding commitments to serve underrepresented academics in engineering, the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz has been selected to lead the inaugural Western regional hub for the Engineering PLUS Alliance.
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Reclaiming the Lab Coat prompts conversations about justice in STEM
The workshop was led by UCSC Genomics Institute Assistant Researcher Ann Mc Cartney and her colleague on the Earth Biogenome Project, Rockefeller University Senior Research Associate Sadye Páez, with the goal of fostering inclusive dialogue among participants that could lead to meaningful change. Working on decorating the lab coats together provided a thought-provoking analysis of…
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Cloud technologies bring organoids into undergraduate classrooms for the first time
Cortical organoids — miniature models of brain tissue grown from stem cells — are becoming increasingly relevant in biotechnology for their usefulness in drug discovery, the study of infectious disease, and more. But the tiny organ models are very tricky to grow and maintain in the lab, meaning many students majoring in biotech-related fields enter…