Session 3 Courses

Course Description:

This course aims to introduce pre-collegiate students to some cutting-edge techniques used in molecular biology, including CRISPR gene editing and DNA recombination using lentiviral vectors. Participants will explore the history, discovery, pre-clinical, and clinical applications of these techniques. Guided discussions about the ethical implications of using these techniques will be carried out. Additionally, the impacts of these techniques on economic sectors such as health and agriculture will be evaluated.

Identify defining features of the molecular biology techniques discussed, Understand and describe specific applications of the techniques discussed, Describe the experimental flow and analysis associated with each technique discussed, Describe how these techniques impact industries such as healthcare and agriculture.

Course Description:

The software engineering field demands effective programming professionals that provide optimal solutions to real-life situations. The Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm offers an authentic toolset to design and develop programs that mimic real-world problems through code. This course will provide high-school students with an overview of OOP techniques they can, in the future, apply in their projects of interest. This course is “demystifying” the OOP concept because we will reveal in two weeks that OOP is not the complex paradigm that some try to blur.

This course will provide basic OOP principles to facilitate designing and implementing a coding program that solves a real-life situation. By the end of this short course, students will be able to design, develop, and implement in code a simple program using the OOP paradigm.

Course Description:

How do babies figure out how to speak? Is it true that the language we know determines what colors we see? How does Siri understand me? Why do people across the United States call soda/pop/cola by different names? What even is a language? Explore your curiosity about language with Intro to Linguistics Research. In this course, we will survey the interdisciplinary field of linguistics and its research methods. We will explore everything from how different people say the “th” sound to whether people form unconscious biases about a person after hearing them speak in a different accent. After this course, you will be able to design a linguistics study and propose a study on any linguistics topic that interests you.

Course Goals:

• Students will be exposed to the scientific study of language.
• Students will gain an understanding of the linguistic phenomena around them.
• Be able to apply the scientific study of language In future topics including communication/writing, social sciences, and more.
• Learning objectives: Students will be able to…
• Identify linguistic phenomena in the real world.
• Recognize both diverse features and commonalities of world languages.
• Identify and examine linguistic beliefs or attitudes.
• Design and propose a linguistics research study

Course Description:

In this introductory course we will provide an overview of the many different careers that the field of forensic medicine has to offer. Through activity-based lectures, students will also learn how professionals in the field apply medical knowledge to the process of a medicolegal death investigation. The course will cover topics such as the analysis of a crime scene to determining cause and manner of death through investigative methods. This course will provide students with an interactive experience and an opportunity to gain knowledge in the field of forensic medicine.

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

• demonstrate general knowledge of forensic medicine through a culminating project
• Understand the role of a crime scene investigator
• Define forensic pathology
• Understand the procedures of a forensic autopsy.
• Define cause, manner, and mechanism of death, and understand the difference
• Understand the role of a death investigator
• Understand the different processes and stages of decomposition
• Understand the different variables contributing to the postmortem interval
• Distinguish the difference between traumatic injuries
• Understand the role of a forensic anthropologist
• Understand the process of establishing a biological profile from skeletal remains
• Understand which methods can be used in human identification

Course Description:

This purpose of the course is to introduce participants to computers as a tool to create and design better materials. Specifically, participants will learn about polymers and how we use computers to model and predict their properties. Polymers are big molecules consisting of smaller building blocks known as monomers. Another name for polymers is plastics, and these are materials that are everyday life materials! The technique we will be using to understand polymers or plastics is called molecular dynamics. Molecular dynamics is a type of computer simulation in which small particles (atoms and molecules) are allowed to interact for some time through certain realistic approximations. This kind of simulation is frequently used in the study of systems such as polymers, proteins and biomolecules, as well as in materials science. Additionally, we will see how we can use simple concepts from artificial intelligence (AI) to predict and accelerate the discovery of new material properties in general.

The specific objective of the course, lectures and presentations include but are not limited to:

• General introduction to computer simulations (past, present and future)
• Introduction to polymer science (physics, chemistry and applications)
• Introduction to molecular dynamics as a computational technique to model polymers
• Using simple concepts in artificial intelligence to predict polymer properties
• Participants (High school students) interested in computer simulation techniques, artificial intelligence, learn how computers can be used to run virtual experiments and create new materials would find the course beneficial.

Course Description:

Are you fascinated by genetics? Are you interested in learning how scientists and doctors use genetics to study and treat human diseases? In this class, we will review the basics of how genes are inherited from parents to offspring and learn how DNA and RNA can cause disease. You’ll learn how to use online tools to search the human genome and identify potential disease-causing mutations. We’ll discuss how researchers use genetics in the laboratory to answer questions about how diseases work and learn the primary methods of genetic engineering. Finally, we’ll discuss current gene therapies and how potential therapies get to patients. As we progress through this course, you’ll learn how to tackle reading journal articles and reviews, design experiments, interpret data, engage in lively ethics debates, and practice presenting genetics topics. Join us this summer to learn about the role of genetics in human disease!

Course goals:

This course will introduce students to the role of genetics in disease: as a cause of disease, as a tool to understand disease mechanisms, and as a method to treat disease.

By the end of this course, students will:

• Understand the fundamentals of inheritance.
• Understand how genetic sequences and structures can contribute to disease.
• Use online tools and databases to answer questions about genetics.
• Design basic experiments to answer genetic questions.
• Discuss the importance of ethics in genetics.
• Be familiar with historical and current genetic therapies.
• Understand the path of genetic therapies from development to clinical use.

Course Description:

What is artificial intelligence (AI) ? How do machines learn? How do companies like Amazon and Netflix use machine learning to generate recommendations? These are all big questions in the field of machine learning (ML) and AI and this course will explore such topics like Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Computer Vision. After this course, students will be more acquainted with ML and AI principles as well as be able to design and structure a problem, learn how to clean and prepare data, create and train a ML model, and how to effectively communicate their results.

Learn basic Python skills, Jupyter notebook and how to set up a PC to do machine learning, Be able to design and set up an experiment for analyzing a simple machine learning problem

Course Description:

Fundamentals of Clinical Research will teach students the building blocks of research and they roles/careers of those involved. This course will go over the entire Research Process, From Proposal to Close up going over the life- cycle of the study. Research is growing industry both local and worldwide with UF projected to receive over 1 billion in research funding in 2022. After finishing this course Students will be able to apply to any research assistant position and speak confidently to the tasks the principal investigator will be asking for them.

• Good Clinical Practice for Clinical Trials Involving Drugs and Devices
• Overview of New Drug Development
• Overview of ICH GCP
• ICH - Comparison Between ICH GCP E6 and U.S. FDA Regulations
• Conducting Investigator-Initiated Studies According to FDA Regulations and GCP
• Investigator Obligations in FDA-Regulated Research
• Managing Investigational Agents According to GCP Requirements
• Overview of U.S. FDA Regulations for Medical Devices
• Informed Consent in Clinical Trials of Drugs, Biologics, and Devices
• Detecting and Evaluating Adverse Events
• Reporting Serious Adverse Events
• Audits and Inspections of Clinical Trials
• Monitoring of Clinical Trials by Industry Sponsors

Course Description:

Have you ever wondered how you can transform from a successful senior in high school into a budding researcher? Have you been yearning for a class that encapsulates a true introduction into research while capturing the transitional skills needed to advance in college. If so, this class was made for you! In this course we will dive into Type 1 diabetes and viral infections while identifying gaps in current literature, practicing experimental design, refining necessary research skills, and creating a collaborative scientific environment where ideas can be workshopped and discussed.

Learning Objectives:

This course will provide an explanation of fundamental concepts in immunology and virology before diving into relevant scientific literature and engaging in discussions in a journal club setting. Students will then have the opportunity to propose, workshop, and present research ideas building on what is currently known in the fields.

Course Description:

What is cancer? How does cancer start and how can it spread? How are we treating cancer currently and what new therapies are being tested now? Interested in science and want to learn about what careers are out there? These are the kinds of questions we will answer in the Fundamentals of Cancer & Careers in Science short course. In this course, we will cover a wide range of interesting topics from the genetic basis of cancer to new treatments being used to target cancer in the clinic. You will also get the chance to learn more in-depth about three different types of cancer: lung cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), and breast cancer. This course will cover a variety of potential careers in science, from the academic world to working at a pharmaceutical company in industry.

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with the basics of cancer biology, common and new treatments for cancer, and a variety of potential future careers in science

Course Objetives:

• To learn basic terminology used in cancer biologies, such as oncogene and tumor suppressor
• Students will understand the genetic basis of cancer and learn about multiple cellular changes throughout the development of cancer
• To provide a broad review of cancer in a historical context and how our knowledge of cancer as a disease has evolved over the years
• To familiarize students with historical and novel treatments of cancer, such as immunotherapy, radiation, chemotherapy, cancer vaccines, and targeted therapies
• Students will apply multiple concepts of cancer biology learned throughout the course to three types of cancer: lung cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia, and breast cancer
• Educate students on a wide variety of potential careers to pursue in academia and industry

Course Description:

Our class,  “Artificial Organoids - A Cross-Disciplinary Approach,” aims to cover the basics of immunology, biomedical engineering, solid organ transplants, and artificial organoids with a particular focus on their design, implementation, and function. The goal of the course is to show how different fields respectively contribute to important human health milestones. The course will address basic immunological effector mechanisms and how they relate to transplants and artificial biotech. Similarly, we will address how engineering approaches must be mindful of functionality, physics, logistics, and design when implementing artificial organs into animals and human models. The course will have students pair into partners and work on a collaborative project (in the form of a presentation) on an interdisciplinary topic of their choice pending instructor approval.

• Learn the very basics of what constitutes a functioning immune system and aims how it protects us
• Learn how the immune system is involved in transplants and other interdisciplinary studies
• Learn about the current trends of organ transplantations and artificially made organs
• Learn how current organ transplants are being conducted and how to measure their success and function
• Learn the basis for designing and fabricating artificial organs based on key parameters and patient outcomes
• Gain an appreciation for an interdisciplinary topic

Course Description:

This class will first teach the basics required of programming in the most popular programming language, Python 3. With that programming basis, I will then teach the necessary math and solution methodologies for optimal decision making, a branch of engineering called "Reinforcement Learning" (RL). The main method of RL that will be taught is called Tabular Q-learning. Once Python and RL has been learned, we will progress to the course project that will feature a game-like competition, where you will program your own agent, to compete against a separately trained autonomous agent in a video-game like environment. The environment will be a grid world, with obstacles that cannot be moved through; Your autonomous agent will navigate the environment with up, down, left, and right controls, but environment noise may cause you to drift to unintended cells. Additionally, your autonomous agent must learn to avoid the mobile adversarial agent (another adversarial agent in the game). If your agent touches the adversarial agent, the episode will end. If your agent makes it past the adversarial agent and into the goalzone, you will win some reward. Your agent will be simulated for a hundred trials, and the average reward will be computed. All students' trained agents final average reward performance will be compared; In the end, they will all be ranked from highest average reward to lowest; results will be presented in a leaderboard type fashion.

Course Description:

This course is designed to teach high-school students the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and web development. Our goal is to give students a stronger intuition of how to apply machine learning concepts to problems they encounter in the future.

Students will:

· Apply deep learning to problems in healthcare

· Create websites to share their ideas with the world

· Create an interactive online game that uses AI

· Utilize open-source resources and learn applicable problem-solving skills

If you are interested in these topics, sign up to take part in our course!

The only prerequisites are:

1. Access to a computer with a webcam

2. Review the resources in the demo linked below

https://ai-webdev.netlify.app

Course Description:

Immerse yourself in global politics as you learn about civil wars around the world. How do civil wars begin? How do they end? In this course, we will be learning about how the end of the Cold War, ethnicity, state weakness, colonialism, and more can impact how civil wars occur. We will then be engaging in a simulated civil war, assigning students to different groups in a fictional country. While they learn about civil wars around the world, students will be tasked with thinking critically about the decisions that leaders make in times of crisis.

The goal for this course is to introduce high school students to the principles of civil war studies, and more broadly, comparative political thought. Students should arrive in college with a greater understanding of civil conflict, prepared to enter an introductory class in Comparative Politics or International Relations.