STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, is an important emphasis in contemporary higher education.  The National Science Foundation and the educational advisory group, Project Kaleidoscope, have identified preparing students with expertise in these areas as a priority.  Two departments within the School of Engineering, Engineering Technology and Biomolecular Sciences, are cooperating on a faculty/student project designed to promote an understanding of engineering problems in biologists and an appreciation of biological application by engineers.

The project is a real life problem: create a robotic instrument that can maintain cell cultures under sterile conditions.   Increasingly, research is done with cultured cells, which are subject to bacterial contamination by the persons maintaining them.   Since bacteria cannot infect machinery, but only biological organisms, it would be logical to do these experiments remotely, reducing the risk to valuable, cultured cells.   Designing such a system requires the knowledge, expertise and cooperation of engineers who can design and build the robotic instrument and a cell biologist who must set the parameters necessary for successful experiments and for sterility. 

While this is trivial for a human to do, it is complex robotically, and will require a student trained in mechanical engineering, to design and build the robotic arms and a student trained in electrical engineering to design and build the electronics for this robot.  Dr. Farid Farahmand will supervise these students. 

The Biomolecular Sciences student, supervised by Dr. Cheryl Watson, will set the biological limits of project and help the engineering students understand which factors are most important.  For example, the photograph of the petri dish must be clearly show cell growth and bacterial contamination if there has been growth within the petri dish.  Or, in the initial phase, the robot must not contaminate the area while it seeds the petri dish with bacteria. The final aspect of this project will be a presentation of the project and the robotic instrument at the Eastern Colleges Science Conference, in April 2007.  This project will also serve to provide as a pilot project for a National Foundation Grant training STEM students using similar projects.