Outreach

Sid serves on ISB’s steering committee of the Next-Gen Bio Learning Network and is particularly enthusiastic in outreach efforts to engage with education leaders at the K-12 level and in community colleges. He has participated in refresher courses that teach contemporary data literacy skills such as artificial intelligence and bioinformatics. In the past year, Sid led two sessions that were deeply rewarding:

Next-Gen Bio Learning Network Workshop (coordinated by Jennifer Eklund, PhD and Claudia Ludwig, MEd)
This workshop explored next-generation biological techniques with a network of biology educators from community colleges across the state of Washington.

On 2024.03.15, Sid led a two-hour discussion about his research in developing microbiota-targeted nutritional interventions for treating malnourished children. He discussed heatmap visualization of large metabolomic datasets and associated statistical analyses (methods of scaling, distance metrics for hierarchical clustering, FDR-correcting p-values, etc.) with the participants. Sid also addressed a variety of topics in the workshop:
– The criticality of collaboration, generosity, and trust in science.
– Considerations while designing clinical trials outside the US.
– Generalizability of human studies.
– Ensuring that peer-reviewed papers are open-access to the public and not behind a paywall.

Principles of Science for Principals (coordinated by Caroline Kiehle, MEd and Jennifer Eklund, PhD)
The goal of this session was to illuminate current practices and conceptual frameworks in STEM workplaces to K-12 education leaders.

On 2024.02.29, Sid served as a guest STEM Professional and led a one-hour discussion with school principals in the Puget Sound region. Using his PhD and postdoc research projects, he illustrated how concepts such as cause and effect, structure/function relationships, effect sizes, and robustness can be used to critically evaluate new research findings.