A Saturday of Science
Learning scientific theories in the classroom is one thing, listening to professional scientists and engineers discuss their work is a whole other experience for students. And that’s what will occur on campus this Saturday as Overlake students have the opportunity to hear from prominent scientists working in a variety of fields, such as epidemiology, virology, mechanical and electronic engineering.
Ashley Powel and Stephanie Belieres, two Overlake faculty working in the science department are helping to organize this year’s Science Symposium, along with members of the Science Club.
“I’m not sure where the idea originally came from as the first symposiums were organized by Lisa Orenstein,” explains Powel. “However, we are having the Science Symposium this year in order to highlight examples of breaking barriers by examining innovative solutions of individuals and organizations in the community and to increase the level of engagement of high school students by introducing them to diverse academic and career opportunities.”
Diverse it is. Below are bios of the keynote and breakout speakers who will be spending their Saturday on campus. “Students will have the opportunity to hear from pioneering scientists and engineers as they talk about a range of topics, such as curing infectious diseases, applying mechanical engineering to the human circulatory system, designing chips to fit onto organs, and using new technology to improve transportation,” says Powel.
The Science Symposium kicks off at 9:00am in Discovery Hall. Snacks and lunch will be provided.
Dr. Neumann is a former UW faculty member who went on to found the Seattle-based biotech company Nortis Bio. Dr. Neumann pioneered a way to create organ-on-chip models. These microfluidic chips provide a unique way to promote the in vitro study of human health and disease, which means that therapeutic drugs and vaccines for diseases like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, etc. can be developed and tested directly in humans without the use of animal models.
Megan Halbrook ('07) is an infectious disease epidemiologist who holds a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia University and is a current Ph.D. student at UCLA. Halbrook previously worked on the 2015 Legionella outbreak in NYC and is currently working on vaccine-induced polio outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She is also an Overlake alum and daughter of Overlake science teacher and department chair, Lisa Orenstein.
Dr. Parish is the Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at IDRI (the Infectious Disease Research Institute) where she heads the TB Discovery Research group. Her work focuses on the discovery of new drugs that are effective at curing drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis with the added goal of shortening the time it takes to cure disease. This encompasses a range of early stage drug discovery including drug target identification and validation, high throughput screening, and medicinal chemistry
Celine Ngouenet currently works at the local biotech company NanoString Technologies where she is an Associate Scientist and Lab Manager working in Research and Development and Diagnostic Development to develop cures for cancer. Previously, she worked for 12 years in the academic field at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center. She is also an Overlake parent to current 10th grader Alan and Overlake alum Nelson.
Mark Hallenbeck is the current director of the Washington State Transportation Center and a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute of UW. He is currently working with multiple agencies in the region to examine how “big data” and new technology can be used to improve mobility in our region. New data sources being generated by cell phones and other electronic devices have dramatically changed the amount and type of data available, and Hallenbeck is heavily involved in developing new systems that can take advantage of these new data sources. This includes building systems which understand and can account for the ownership of the data, usage restrictions placed on those data due to privacy concerns, and the quality and sample limitations of these new data sources.
Dr. Venkat is a postdoctoral research associate in Mechanical Engineering at UW. There he analyzes the development, detection, and treatment of various cardiovascular diseases from an engineering perspective. Given his interest in understanding how fluids behave in nature, he investigates blood flow in the human body under normal and abnormal (or diseased) conditions which enables clinicians and surgeons to efficiently treat patients. Over the past decade, Dr. Venkat has been involved in several high-impact clinical projects, such as cancer metastasis, congenital heart diseases, heart failure, and stroke. To perform these investigations, he uses a blend of cutting-edge tools, such as patient-specific computational modeling of blood flow, virtual surgery, 3D printing, and rapid prototyping.