Bridges To The Future – Infusing Cutting Edge Research Into Undergraduate Biotechnology Curriculum

The last several decades in biology have seen tremendous research in recombinant DNA technology and its applications in medicine, agriculture and the environment. The next century will see the evolution of new technologies needed for bioprocessing therapeutic drugs, proteins and enzymes generated through recombinant DNA technology. These new technologies have profoundly transformed the way scientists design, perform and analyze experiments. As biological concepts and models become more quantitative, biological research is increasingly dependent on concepts and methods drawn from other scientific disciplines. Thus as biology becomes more quantitative and systematic, it will become a foundational science for engineering similar to physics, chemistry and mathematics. The long term goal of this project is to design and disseminate interdisciplinary teaching material that will bridge different disciplines and provide an increasing understanding of the relevance of concepts of chemistry, engineering, and computing in biology. The objectives are to: (1) Develop an interdisciplinary biotechnology curriculum for Bachelor’s in biotechnology (2) Design and disseminate project-based modules that will guide students through the process of scientific discovery to commercial production to enhance investigative and collaborative learning and implement the parallel process of assessment for this approach to verify student learning. Due to modular nature of our project, the model can be easily adapted by other institutions nationally and therefore has excellent potential to reach a large number of students.