Next Generation Scientists

Since 1999, CCR in collaboration with Mathematics professor and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, has hosted a 2 week summer intensive workshop for local area high school students.  The themes and projects vary each year and have included such topics as bioinformatics, computational chemistry, and visualization.  In 2013, students focused on protein structures: how scientists determine proteins’ shape, why this information matters and how computers expedite this kind of research.  They have opportunities to tour not only CCR's supercomputing facility and 3D visualization lab but also labs in the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and the new Clinical and Translational Research Center at UB.  After daily lectures and lessons in programming and database manipulation, students form teams of 3 or 4 and begin working on a project to solve a problem they've been assigned.  The students then put together a PowerPoint presentation to present to friends and family on the last day of the workshop.