Baltimore UNDERGROUND SCIENCE SPACE

Youth Courses and School Programs: BUGSS continued providing courses for students from kindergarten through middle school. Included were nine courses at BUGSS delivered directly to the public, courses organized specifically for homeschool students, and courses organized for other nonprofit partners including a five-week summer, middle-school program for Merit Health Leadership Academy and two four-week middle-school camps for STEMcx and Latino Educational Advancement Fund. In addition, we continued working with Carnegie Institute of Washington and Project Bioeyes to deliver a one-week Microbes In The Classroom course to students at Baltimore middle schools.

Community and Individual Member Projects: Central to BUGSS' mission is providing lab space to individuals and groups within our community, who wish to conduct experiments of their own design. Individuals pay membership fees to BUGSS, which fees enable them to access the BUGSS lab facilities and equipment, as well as a small number of disposable reagents. In this way, we dramatically reduce startup costs for those interested in pursuing high-risk, non-traditional, multi-disciplinary and early-stage projects. In 2023, BUGSS supported three group projects for our members: Open Insulin, Barcoding The Harbor and Chromoproteins. Open Insulin seeks to address issues of health equity by developing open-source methods of insulin production. Barcoding The Harbor is a collaboration with institutions such as the National Aquarium, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, and Ocean Research Project to systematically characterize the biota of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay, and Chromoproteins genetically engineers new pigments into yeast and bacterial cells, which can then be used for new bio-art projects. These group projects facilitate easy entry for new members into sophisticated science projects without requiring extensive prior training. In addition to our community projects, we had individual members who pursued projects at BUGSS. These included genetic engineering of plant species for which few genetic tools currently exist, analysis of bacteria living in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and engineering of systems to respond to DNA damage in cancer cells. Three additional, early-stage, biotechnology companies continued to operate within our space and further develop their businesses.

iGEM: In 2023, BUGSS again mentored a team competing in the international Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM), the East Coast Bio Crew team. The team met at BUGSS throughout the spring and summer to design and carry out a project to combat pollution of our waterways by agricultural runoff, which situation leads to harmful algal blooms. In addition, students interviewed experts, investigated how the project could be developed and implemented in the real world, learned about the social and ethical implications of the project and whether it was feasible, taught the public about issues related to the project and, more broadly, about diverse scientists, and produced video and oral presentations. The 2023 team included 33 high school students and nine mentors, who were professional scientists, postbaccalaureate and graduate students. As a culmination of their work, team members attended the 2023 iGEM Jamboree either virtually or by traveling to Paris, where they presented their work to judges, met other teams and earned a gold medal for their accomplishments.

Adult Courses and Seminars: BUGSS teaches courses to the general public to increase people's understanding of science and laboratory skills. Courses explored aspects of modern biotechnology, bioinformatics, genetics and molecular biology, and included a Molecular Biology Boot Camp, Modern Techniques For DNA Cloning, agar art workshop and six Lab Skills Nights short courses. BUGSS also offered seminars on topics including The Current State Of Climate Change, Structural Color, and Epidemiology. Collectively, our courses and seminars impacted 289 people in 2023.