CU Boulder neuroscientist will spend much of August helping European high school students learn the finer points of gene manipulation in prairieÌęvoles
Neuroscientist Zoe Donaldson and her team have found a new way to contribute to global science education.
The associate professor in the Departments of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder is teaming up with a postdoctoral researcher and one of her graduate students to teach international high school students this August at theÌęÌę(SMTB) in Estonia.
Donaldson became involved with the SMTB back in the late 1990s when she attended college with the man who would help start the school, Fyodor (Fedya) Kondrashov.
âAlthough Fedya and I went into different fieldsâevolutionary biology and neurogenetics, respectivelyâour work has had interwoven themes that have seenÌęus collaborate multiple times,â Donaldson says. âWe kept in touch, but it was only after I joined the faculty at CU Boulder and had established my lab that it was feasible for me to begin teaching at the school.â
Kondrashov was excited to invite Donaldson to teach at SMTB.
âI knew that Zoe has exactly the qualities we are looking for,â Kondrashov says. âOne of the schoolâs pillars is to create an inclusive program. Every year we have students from over a dozen countries. We work very hard to eliminate barriers so that students feel included. I know that Zoe gets it, and I know sheâll create an inclusive environment.â
Donaldson says before the pandemic, she received a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new ways to manipulate the genome of the prairie vole (a small rodent about the size of a hamster), andÌęshe had an idea for how to involve high school students in a project that would fit into the goals of the grant.Ìę
âThat was 2020,â she says. âThis is just now becoming a reality after two years of pandemic patience.â
Donaldson explains that prairie voles, unlike lab mice and rats, are monogamous and form lifelong bonds with their mating partners.ÌęâMy lab studies what makes it possible for them to form such bonds, how doing so changes their brain and what happens when they lose a partner.â
Donaldsonâs work combines neural and genetic experiments to ask questions like what genes are required to be able to form a pair bond, and can an existing bond be broken by manipulating genes in the brain.
âThese questions are the core of what weâll be doing at SMTB,â Donaldson says. âThe students will help us make a set of molecular tools to manipulate specific genes in the prairie vole brain,Ìęwhich will be used by my lab and others in future experiments to try to make or break bonds.âÌę
Julie Sadino, who recently earned her PhD in MCDB with a behavioral neuroscience focus, works with Donaldson as a postdoctoral fellow and will be teaching alongside Donaldson at SMTB.Ìę
âThis is a really cool opportunity, not only for us but also for the students,â Sadino says. âIâm very thankful that such a program exists and that we were invited to be a part of it. On a personal note, this is going way out of my comfort zone, but I hope to gain a lot from this experience. I've never been to Europe before, let alone seen how science is done in an international context, so it's all very exciting.â
Liza Brusman, a fourth-year MCDB graduate student who has also served as a teaching assistant, is also going on the trip.
âI think it will be a great opportunity,â Brusman says. âI didn't know what research entailed or how experiments were done when I was in highÌęschool, and an experience like this would have been really valuable to me. I also like teaching ⊠(and) being able to make students excited about science.â
This is a really cool opportunity, not only for us but also for the students. ... Iâm very thankful that such a program exists and that we were invited to be a part of it."
Donaldson says both Sadino and Brusman have âspecialized skillsâ that will be âinvaluableâ to their course.
âThe hands-on nature of the course means that one person can't do it alone,â Donaldson says. âIn addition to teaching, the three of us will serve as mentors to students as they decide which projects to pursue and discuss career opportunities in science.âÌę
Kondrashov says he expects about 50 students to take in classes and labs at SMTBâsome of whom are expected to be from Ukraine.
âOur students come from a diversity of different countries. Some of them end up in the top universities in the worldâHarvard, Yale, Cambridgeâjust to name a few. Most end up in the best universities available to them in the country where they are from. An incredible statistic that I have yet to internalize is that among our first graduates, more than half end up going to do a masterâs or a PhD degree, while some have gone on to industry from their bachelorâs program and some have gone on to medical school and starting a career in medicine or pharmacy.âÌę
Kondrashov adds that he hopes students get to know Donaldson as a personââto understand her values about research, human relationships in the lab, her integrity and motivation, and also to see her as a wonderful human. In short, my greatest wish is for all of them to be themselves and in doing so being the role models to our students they crave to get to interact with.â