{"338071":{"#nid":"338071","#data":{"type":"news","title":"The BUZZ","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EElephant toothpaste was overflowing on the bio quad lawn while flash-frozen flowers shattered in shards on the pavement outside the U.A. Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Building. Inside the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, children were eating astronaut ice cream, making silly putty and touching pigs\u2019 hearts and goats\u2019 eyeballs under the guidance of grad students, whose various and colorful demonstrations suggested this might be mad scientist training, when in fact it was the BUZZ on Biotechnology high school open house. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis was just part of the scene on Saturday, October 18th, at the annual BUZZ open house event, presented by the Petit Institute and run by the Bioengineering and Bioscience Unified Graduate Students, or BBUGS, the largest, most diverse graduate student group on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E \u201cWe look forward to this day every year,\u201d says Kelli Schuyler, who teaches advanced placement chemistry in Forsyth Central High School\u2019s STEM Academy, which sent almost 50 students to Georgia Tech for BUZZ on Biotech. They were part of a crowd that approached 400 at what may have been the biggest BUZZ yet. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe started the STEM Academy three years ago, and as part of that we looked for opportunities for student enrichment,\u201d says Schuyler, while a pair of Georgia Tech bio students were demonstrating freezing flowers, bananas and ping pong balls in a vat of liquid nitrogen a few feet away. \u201cOur students love this. The lab tours, the seminars, making things blow up \u2013 liquid nitrogen, you can\u2019t go wrong with that!\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBUZZ on Biotechnology, presided over by the BBUGS\u2019 Education and Outreach committee, is the largest and most popular annual event organized by the group, for the ticket holders \u2013 the event is geared toward high school students \u2013 and the volunteers. In all, there were about 50 students volunteering. For grad student Ashley Allen, BUZZ has become a welcome routine. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI think this is my sixth year in a row. I wouldn\u2019t miss it,\u201d says Allen, who is nearing the end of her Ph.D. pursuit. She was overseeing the Egg Drop, the day\u2019s last event, which focuses on the prevention of head injuries by asking participants to design protective \u201chelmets\u201d for raw eggs, which are then dropped from the third floor of the Petit Institute\u2019s atrium. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI\u2019m really interested in going to Georgia Tech,\u201d says Grace Littlefield. \u201cI want to study biomedical engineering.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe Dunwoody High School sophomore, who won the Egg Drop competition, attended BUZZ with her father, Jim Littlefield, who says, \u201cWe really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with some of the graduate students, not only about their experience here at Georgia Tech, but also some of their undergraduate experiences, how they got interested in biotechnology and some ideas of what Grace can being doing now in high school to be better prepared when she, hopefully, comes to Georgia Tech.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThough not intended to be a massive recruiting tool for Georgia Tech, the BUZZ on Biotech is \u201csome of the best public relations you can imagine for the university,\u201d according to Loren Williams, professor of chemistry and biochemistry who is director of the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution (Ribo Evo) at the Petit Institute. \u201cIt\u2019s also a really good experience for our students.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWilliams never misses BUZZ, an event that puts Tech students, grads and undergrads, front and center. These students performed the demonstrations \u2013 there were about 20 of them, experiments for the participants to try. They conducted the lab tours and performed the seminars \u2013 usually there\u2019s one, focused on stem cells, but this year the BBUGS added another one, on biomaterials. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThe seminars were particularly popular this year, I think total attendance was about 150 people,\u201d says Tom Bongiorno, part of the BBUGS Education and Outreach leadership team, with Kyle Blum, Jessie Butts and Jennifer Pentz. \u201cThe kids love the hands-on demonstrations and seeing some pretty cool science, the lab tours are always very popular. Basically, we can never have enough lab tours.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EBut somehow, they managed to squeeze 288 people into three hours of lab tours. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA group of students, all teens, many accompanied by parents, follows BBUGS member Torri Rinker on a tour of Johnna Temenoff\u2019s lab, one of six different lab tours during this year\u2019s BUZZ. Temenoff, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, works with polymeric biomaterials for orthopedic applications. Rinker works in the lab. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cHas anyone here ever torn an ACL, or know someone who has?\u201d Rinker asks. Several hands shoot up. \u201cDoes it heal quickly?\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe group shakes its collective head. \u201cNo,\u201d Rinker agrees. \u201cYou\u2019re looking at, potentially, a lifetime of pain and disability. The problem with these tissues is, they just don\u2019t naturally heal. If you break a bone, what happens?\u201d A chorus of kids: \u201cIt heals.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cYou got it,\u201d Rinker says. \u201cBut these tissues are different, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re so interested in working to regenerate them, using different tissue engineering and regenerative medicine techniques.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs Rinker patiently explains the work of the lab, talks about the synthetic and naturally derived biomaterials that are being used to heal degenerative tissues, the teens nod. They\u2019re making the connections. One of them, Jonah Cloer, a junior at St. Pius High School, accompanied by his mom, Carolyn Zimney, is inspecting a little hydrogel in his gloved hand. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cThis is interesting, because these grad students are demonstrating to him how what he\u2019s learned in cell reproduction manifests itself in the real world, what can be done here in the labs, and what he might be doing after school,\u201d Zimney says. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EJonah is impressed though undecided about the direction he\u2019ll take in college. \u201cBut this,\u201d he says, removing the protective latex lab gloves, \u201cis giving me some really good ideas about what I\u2019d like to do.\u201d \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd that is a big reason why the BUZZ on Biotechnology will be back again next fall.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Annual biotech open house draws 400 visitors"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAnnual biotech open house draws 400 visitors\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Annual biotech open house draws 400 visitors"}],"uid":"27195","created_gmt":"2014-10-29 12:22:35","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:23","author":"Colly Mitchell","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-10-29T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2014-10-29T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"338101":{"id":"338101","type":"image","title":"BBUGS member Torri Rinker gives tour of a state-of-the-art lab for Buzz on Biotechnology guests","body":null,"created":"1449245216","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:06:56","changed":"1475895051","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:50:51","alt":"BBUGS member Torri Rinker gives tour of a state-of-the-art lab for Buzz on Biotechnology 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