Josie Jacob-Dolan’s project: working on a process that converts greenhouse gases themselves into energy.
What are doctors looking at in an MRI? Can researchers put an elephant in one? Are renewable versions of methanol as powerful in cars as gasoline?
Teens posed these questions to Yale University graduate students during what has become a weekly online series called Exploring Science.
The series is partially the brainchild of neuroscience PhD student Rick Crouse.
Crouse’s parents did not go to college. He said this has made him especially aware of divides that keep first generation and non-white students out of the sciences.
“I didn’t have role models who were scientists. I didn’t really know what it meant to become a scientist,” Crouse said.
Crouse had planned to organize a “Flipped Science Fair” this spring. When the Covid-19 pandemic canceled the event, his team started talking with organizers of Yale Open Labs and Science Café about what they should be doing instead.
The groups hit upon the idea of repurposing speakers from their other events into an online Zoom and YouTube series.
Quiet MRIs And The Power Of Water Splitting
Yale biomedical engineering student Kartiga Selvaganesan.
Speakers at the most recent session, held on Tuesday, were Yale biomedical engineering and chemistry grad students Kartiga Selvaganesan and Josie Jacob-Dolan.
Roughly 128 children and volunteers joined the Zoom call to hear Selvaganesan and Jacob-Dolan. Children chimed in and asked questions during the presentations using the chat feature of the videoconferencing software.
Selvaganesan spoke to the middle schoolers over Zoom about the problems with magnetic resonance imaging scanners, explaining to the shock of many in the chat that each MRI scan can cost up to $2,000.
Selvaganesan is helping to design a scanner that would be less expensive, easier to install and quieter than the usual type. The scanner (pictured above) would be open rather than the usual tube that can cause claustrophobia in patients.
The design uses a much less powerful magnet than those in the usual scanners, so the images it creates tend not to be as clear. She explained it would be for more generic testing to see whether anything is wrong with a patient. If something seemed wrong, doctors could then turn to the more expensive test to get more information.
Jacob-Dolan (pictured above) walked the listeners through the harmful environmental effects of oil, natural gas and coal.
The kids agreed in the chat that her visualization of global warming was terrifying but they did not want to give up the energy that powered the devices they were using to call into the meeting.
Jacob-Dolan described a new process that she is working on that converts greenhouse gases themselves into energy.
Jacob-Dolan focuses on the piece of the process that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. That hydrogen then merges with carbon dioxide to create methanol.
When one of the students asked through the chat whether methanol is as powerful as gasoline, Jacob-Dolan said that it’s already used in sports cars. The main downside is that it is extremely flammable, so companies would likely start by incorporating it into gasoline.
Fruit Scans and Elephants
10-year-old Ngoziabata Obiora: Have researchers ever put an elephant in an MRI?
Between the presentations, the children split into breakout rooms to talk with volunteers about Selvaganesan’s research.
Crouse ran one of the virtual rooms and asked his handful of students what interested them in the presentation.
All the kids agreed that the coolest part of her presentation were the MRI scans of fruits that Selvaganesan showed, to explain that MRIs build images based on water in the human body.
Ngoziabata — “Abata” — Obiora, 10, thought the pineapple MRI was the coolest image.
Abata is a rising sixth grader at Amistad Academy. Her mother, Nkechi Obiora, signed her up for the Exploring Science series in lieu of her usual summer gymnastics camp. Obiora said that she did not feel comfortable signing her daughter up for any in-person group activities during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It works out well for Abata, whose favorite subject in school is science. She said that she wants to be a doctor and needs to study science for that dream.
“I had a heart surgery when I was a baby. People saved my life so I want to save others’ lives just the way they did for me,” she said in an interview.
Abata’s favorite talk so far was on a drug for cancer. She liked Selvaganesan’s too.
“It was actually exciting. I don’t know if I’ve been in an MRI but it sounded really cool,” she said.
She was fascinated when Crouse answered a question from the large group chat and said that researchers sometimes do put animals in MRIs. Crouse said that researchers use them to understand how animal brains work compared to humans or vets use MRIs to diagnose pets.
Abata wanted to know: have they ever put an elephant in one?
Crouse said that maybe Selvaganesan’s open-plan MRI would allow that to happen.
Neuroscience PhD student Rick Crouse.
As a New Havener, Abata is part of the series’ target audience. For a few weeks, the organizers were getting few registrants from within the city and more from suburbs and elsewhere.
Crouse said that the organizers tried advertising with neighborhood groups, alders, email lists, targeted Facebook ads and more. The best turnout they got from New Haveners was 25 percent of sign-ups.
Then the organizers reached out to Arte Inc to leave texts and voicemails with families.
“We somehow opened a floodgate,” Crouse said.
Suddenly Exploring Science had emails from 240 New Haven families and 75 percent of participants were New Haveners.
Arte Inc primarily serves the Latino community, so Crouse said that the grad students are thinking about hosting one week of Exploring Science entirely in Spanish.
Tuesday was the seventh week of the series. Next Tuesday’s talks are on decision-making in mice brains and the chemicals that make food taste and smell good.
Watch the videos from the series here and sign up for the next session here.