Biophysical Society Bulletin | May 2018

BiophysicsWeek

BiophysicsWeek Kicks off in Baltimore, Maryland On a cold and slushy March day in Baltimore, a group of local high-school students took the day off, not for yet another snow-day cancellation, but to take a field trip to nearby Johns Hopkins University to learn (and do) some biophysics. The event, which was developed with the help and support of the Biophysical Society as a kick-off event for Biophysics Week,

olution structures using pymol, and monitored CRISPR:DNA binding using single-molecule TIRF spectroscopy with T.J. Ha , the winner of this year’s Kinosita award from the Biophysical Society. The day wrapped up with a pizza lunch and a ques- tion-and-answer period with Barrick and Ro Kampman from the Biophysical Society, where students asked questions about different aspects of becoming a scientist, from apply- ing to college to becoming a professor. Many students were also interested to learn about a six-week summer research program run by Hopkins entitled Biophysics for Baltimore Teens (BRBT, http:/sites.krieger.jhu.edu/brbt/). Directed by Junsan Sohn , the BRBT program provides an in-depth expo- sure to laboratory research in biophysics. Hopefully for many of these students, what started as a cold slushy day in March will turn into a summer of biophysics fun, and then a lifetime of research. BPS Student Chapters Join in Celebrating Biophysics Week During Biophysics Week 2018 many of the Society’s student chapters took an active role in working to raise awareness and celebrate the field across their campuses by hosting a variety of events. At Emory University, Kevin Yehl returned to his alma mater to discuss his scientific journey — from his early training in biophysics at Emory, involving DNAzyme-Gold nanoparticle conjugates, leading up to his current work at MIT that is based on engineering bacteriophage structure-function relation- ships. Dozens of people from Emory’s research community attended this seminar to learn about molecular biophysics and celebrate Biophysics Week. Students also got the chance to meet with Yehl informally and discuss the various pros- pects and challenges facing early career academics in the field of biophysics. At the University of Michigan, members and leaders of the student chapter there participated in an outreach program to show young elementary students basic physics demos and get them excited about science, as well as hosting Joseph Puglisi of Stanford University, who spoke on campus and dis- cussed his research with students over lunch. The student chapter at Florida State University the student chapter worked with the Institute of Molecular Biophysics (IMB) to host NIH distinguished investigator Wei Yang , who presented her work on utilizing in crystallo catalysis and X-ray diffraction analysis to visualize DNA synthesis and RNA degradation. After her talk, she was awarded IMB’s Donald

took advantage of an al- ready strong relationship between the science department at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (“Poly,” a science-fo- cused public high school within the Baltimore public schools system) and the biophysics pro- gram at Johns Hopkins University. The goal of the day-long program was to expose city high-school students to biophysics, train them to do cutting-edge lab techniques and experi- ments, kindle enthusiasm

BPS member Juliette Lecomte, center, assists students from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute with an experiment.

for science as both a participatory activity and a great career, and show them a pathway to a life in the biophysical sciences. Accompanied by Poly chemistry teacher Adam Wishart , the 15 juniors arrived at the Hopkins Homewood campus, where they heard a brief introduction from Doug Barrick to proteins and protein technology, and to the use of fluorescent proteins in biophysics, biotechnology, and medicine. After this intro- duction, students got down to business in the Undergraduate

Biophysics Teaching Laboratory, running column chromatogra- phy to purify samples of GFP and m-cherry fusion proteins under the guidance of laboratory director Carolyn Fitch and Bertrand Garcia-Moreno , Department Chair. From there, they proceeded to the Center for Molecular Biophysics where they

Baltimore high school students learn about biophysics at Johns Hopkins University during Biophysics Week.

collected circular dichroism spectra of proteins with different secondary structures, compared their spectra to high-res-

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