Though segregation in public schools was deemed unconstitutional over 75 years ago, New York City’s public school system remains one of the most racially segregated in the country. The extreme disparities in funding, facilities, and academic rigor leave students receiving drastically different educations.

BioBus is committed to addressing this problem.

Founded by Ben Dubin-Thaler and Latasha Wright, BioBus works to help K-12 and college students who are typically excluded from the scientific community to engage with science. Today, BioBus has reached over 40,000 students in more than 1,000 schools worldwide. The story of BioBus began in New York City, with its work grounded in Harlem and the Lower East Side.

In 2008, Dubin-Thaler purchased the organization’s first bus on Craigslist. Shortly after, that bus was filled with microscopes and transformed into a mobile lab. At the heart of BioBus’ mission is making science education accessible, which is why the organization commits to bringing the science to the student. The mobile lab travels to schools in the afternoon, over the summer, and during the weekends, providing students with a well-rounded science experience at a time convenient to them.

“We are really interested in giving students a pure experience of what science is and allowing discovery and reigniting the curiosity that a lot of times gets stifled in classrooms,” Wright told The Civic Science Observer. “Kids get to understand that science is about asking questions and being curious and understanding that everybody is a natural scientist and that scientists are people who look like them, who think like them, who walk like them, and not just the Albert Einsteins.”

BioBus provides three main types of educational experiences: Discover, Explore, and “Pursue.” Discover programs are short pop-up events designed to give students a sample of what BioBus has to offer. Explore programs are 8-12 weeks long and take place at schools and community centers so students can have a more in-depth research experience. Lastly, Pursue programs are paid internship opportunities for high school and college students that not only allow them to conduct their own research, but also help teach younger students involved in BioBus. Whether you’re on the bus for 45 minutes or a whole summer, BioBus is committed to providing a meaningful experience for all its students.

However, beyond BioBus’ three-pronged approach, Wright attributes much of the organization’s success to their investment in building community.

“When we go to different communities, we’re not like, ‘Oh, this is science. Like it.” We try to say, ‘Oh, what’s happening in the community where science is already happening and how can we augment that… How can we listen to the community to see what they really are interested in and what they want to learn about,” Wright said. “I think we always are trying to understand what the people in the communities we are partnering with want to hear, want to learn, want to be empowered to do in our communities so it’s super important for us to be able to be ambassadors of science and advocates for people who need us to advocate for them scientifically.”

Elena Markowitz can testify to the organization’s commitment to community. Marcowitz, a second-year graduate student at Northeastern studying environmental science and policy, first joined BioBus in 2021 as a college intern. Markowitz’s academic journey was a dynamic one, going from being a self-described “full theater kid” to receiving her Bachelor of Science in biology from Marymount Manhattan College. Math was always a challenging subject for Marcowitz, in particular due to her struggles with executive functioning disorder, a learning disability that impacts processing logarithmic processes. However, despite her challenges with math, Marcowitz always loved science, so she decided to pursue a college degree in biology.

“I always would love to use myself as an example for students and be like, ‘Listen, if you gave me an eighth grade word problem, I would struggle with it, but I could tell you all of these different things about biology, about genetics, about so many different topics,’” Marcowitz said. “You don’t have to be good at everything. Being bad at one thing does not exclude you from the entire wonderful world of science.”

Marcowitz credits the teachers and tutors throughout her life for her success as a BioBus instructor.

“I would say for the most part that my learning disability didn’t really make it difficult for me to teach, because I had already had so much experience with supportive instruction I knew and had kind of absorbed by being on the receiving end these different strategies of support for students, so that when I was now in the position of teaching, I now have this very large toolbox of things to reach into to help these students,” Marcowitz said.

One of the several tools in Marcowitz’s toolbox is Spanish. During her time with the organization, Marcowitz recalls teachers speaking several languages, including Spanish, French, and Mandarin, ensuring that students could learn in the language with which they were most comfortable.

“We have a variety of languages at BioBus, Spanish is definitely the most strong. There are students who are used to not having teachers speak their language. Spanish is my second language. I’m not fluent in it by any means, but I’m definitely proficient. And having that, and then also having the availability to have this toolbox of different mechanisms of support and different ways to help excite students about science, was a really amazing and fulfilling part of working at BioBus.”

Despite BioBus’ many successes, in 2020, BioBus like the rest of the world, was hit with a curveball: the COVID-19 pandemic. With schools having moved fully online, and in-person sessions no longer possible, BioBus, an organization built on community engagement and in-person teaching, was forced to adapt.

So BioBus set off to do the impossible. After all, if they could bring a lab to a school, why couldn’t they create a lab in a student’s home? After equipping all of their students with at-home microscopes and coordinating skype calls, the virtual experimentation was set to begin. From pressing flowers to observing ant behavior, students were encouraged to engage with science through tools found in their very homes.

“If you would’ve asked me before the pandemic ‘Would what we do be translatable?’ I would say ‘No’ because I thought we were mostly hands-on, but it turned out it is translatable,” Wright said. “We adapted pretty well during the pandemic and I was proud of that.”

Vanessa Akwada, a former high school intern at BioBus, worked with the organization during the pandemic. Her role included creating bite-sized videos to teach the students how to use their at-home microscopes, describing herself as a science “content creator.”

“[BioBus] thrived [during the pandemic], they did not take the back seat in any capacity,” Akwada said. “… they really care about their students and the lengths that they go to, even during COVID, to want to share and continue the learning opportunities. That was really special to me. I love that I was able to do that and be a part of that.”

Whether in a classroom, on a bus, or online, an investment in understanding one’s community is the throughline of BioBus’ work.

“The key is really making sure you have a clear plan on how you want to interact with the community,” Wright said. “Making sure you do a community needs assessment and you’re making sure you’re bringing something of value to the communities that you want to change and that you want to be a part of and that you are able to really work with them and understand you’re in a service role and you’re working with them and you want to co-create things… I think that trying to operate in as good faith as possible and be as open and transparent as possible, even when you’re having problems, I think that that is important too.”

BioBus’ commitment to going the extra mile is not in vain. Many of its students credit the organization for being the reason they pursued a career in science.

“I think maybe a more subtle takeaway was just how much people want to learn if you give them the chance, especially when a lot of students feel that they’re not even going to be considered for the race,” Marcowitz said. “I can’t tell you the number of times that students would start out disinterested or not enthusiastic. But the second that we showed them, like the pregnant daphnia under the microscope, and they saw the babies moving inside immediately, they wanted to know every single thing about this animal. What is it? Why does it look like that? What’s it related to? How did it look like that? When are the babies going to be born? And it’s this very inspirational thing that I take into other areas of my life, which is, if you give, if you give someone the chance to be listened to, that’s all people need.”

To learn more about BioBus and how to get involved visit https://www.biobus.org/ or email latasha@biobus.org

NEW YORK — Concerns recently over the spread of bird flu into dairy cattle, and subsequently human dairy workers, has made the work of one group of New York City high school students even more important.  

The New York City Virus Hunters are getting their hands dirty to find out which little birdies might be carrying a deadly disease. Strolls through Central Park spark excitement when the group finds a fresh splatter.

High schoolers scoop poop in search of bird flu

Mount Sinai and BioBus pay high school students as Junior Scientist interns, who scoop up poop in search of sickness.

“Really the most important thing is just making sure it’s fresh, it’s not dried up,” explained Kailani Gaynor as she collected a sample.

As a haven for both local and migratory birds, Central Park is a unique study of an urban environment.

“We try not to collect it too close because we want to spread it out, make sure it’s from different birds so that we get a variety,” said Kadiatou Kante.

“We would look around to see what kind of birds are surrounding where we collected the data,” continued Sadia Choudhury.

Project supported by National Institutes of Health

The project started in 2020 with support from the National Institutes of Health and aims to better understand how bird flu can adapt and fly between species.

“It does not mean it’s dangerous for humans right now, but we want to make sure we collect as much data as possible and early enough so we can actually assess the risk,” said BioBus director of community service Dr. Christine Marizzi.

As they take their samples back across the street to Mount Sinai’s Krammer Lab, the Virus Hunters mix up a solution to start to see the differences in DNA with help from lead scientist Philip Meade, PhD, a Post-Doctoral Fellow.

“If we have something that’s real, then we’ll get the full genetic sequence, the whole genome of the virus, so we can do analysis on it,” Meade said.

Important to learn bird flu’s impact on pets

Meade said he is more worried about the spread in dairy cows than the jump to their handlers, as it is important to understand the potential for pets, especially in parks.

“Cows are more similar to humans than birds are to humans,” Meade said, “and the virus having extra time and basically reps to acquire adaptations for mammals is something that we really have to keep an eye on.”

Out of more than 1,900 samples collected over one year, from feces, plus water where winged beings gather and patients at the Wild Bird Fund, the Virus Hunters found H5N1 in six birds, including three geese and a sick chicken in Upper Manhattan, but none of the droppings proved to be positive for flu.

Their research was recently published in the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Virology.

The next NYC Virus Hunters group starts in the fall with six new students.