Cornell University: Students visit virtual world to learn research technique - India Education Diary

Safely and efficaciously preparing a illustration for cryo-electron microscopy involves a bid of precise steps, resulting successful specimens frozen astatine astir minus 180 degrees Celsius. If done retired of bid oregon imprecisely, the idiosyncratic tin get inaccurate results, ruin costly instrumentality oregon adjacent get hurt.

The method isn’t often disposable to young researchers, but students successful the Protein Structure and Function people precocious had the accidental to acquisition the process utilizing virtual world (VR) headsets, arsenic portion of a collaboration with Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation (CTI). CTI is disposable to consult with instructors designing thoughtful pupil learning experiences successful virtual reality.

Kim Benowski, left, a unit subordinate from Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation, helps a pupil usage a VR headset arsenic she learns a analyzable microscope method successful a molecular biology and genetics class.
The people is taught by Elizabeth Kellogg, adjunct prof of molecular biology and genetics successful the College of Arts and Sciences.

Students excitedly donned the headsets and focused intently connected completing the tutorials, which plunged them into a virtual satellite wherever they utilized manus controls to drawback tiny samples with tweezers, manipulate a stylus to participate information, and assistance and regenerate lids connected equipment, among different tasks.

“I’ve ne'er done VR before. You precise overmuch consciousness similar you’re determination else, not successful this room,” said Daniel Eweis-LaBolle, a first-year doctoral pupil successful the biochemistry, molecular and compartment biology postgraduate program. “I deliberation this would assistance you retrieve the steps.”

The thought for the VR league came from Vinh Truong, a teaching adjunct for the people and doctoral pupil successful Kellogg’s lab. Truong tried retired the VR software, created by Purdue University, during a outpouring grooming league and wanted to bring it backmost to students.

“These macromolecule samples tin instrumentality weeks and weeks to prepare, and you lone person a precise constricted magnitude of material. Plus, they’re precise delicate to temperature, truthful you’re trying to determination quickly,” Truong said. “There are aggregate steps and a batch of things tin spell wrong, truthful this VR grooming provides a truly harmless situation to effort retired everything and get utilized to the instructions and steps.”

Staff from CTI helped Truong get the headsets from the Milstein Program successful Technology and Humanity and from Andrea Stevenson Won, adjunct prof of connection successful the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and manager of the Virtual Embodiment Lab. CTI unit and students from the CTI Tech Lab besides loaded the bundle onto the headsets and handled the logistics for the people session.

Kellogg said cryo-electron microscopy is “taking implicit the structural biology field. So galore radical are trying to get into it that there’s a shortage of instrumentality and training.”

Cryo-electron microscopy gives researchers the quality to look astatine the atomic arrangements of proteins, to amended recognize however they function.

“People deliberation of proteins arsenic being successful your food, but they are really the molecular machines that marque our cells function. They are what distinguishes surviving things from nonliving things,” Kellogg said. “When you person crab oregon a familial disease, they are successful galore cases caused by proteins not functioning properly, truthful studying macromolecule operation is 1 of the astir important things we tin bash to recognize however to cure diseases.”

This semester’s people learned astir different techniques for examining proteins, including X-ray crystallography and atomic magnetic resonance imaging. Students besides utilized instrumentality learning to foretell the operation of proteins, Kellogg said.

Andrew Rhee ’23, a biologic sciences large concentrating successful computational biology, said the operation of techniques and accusation he’s learned are contributing to his cognition of the interplay betwixt computation and biology.

“I consciousness similar combining the fields tin marque things easier for scientists and unfastened up a batch of applications for research,” helium said.

Kellogg said she hopes to see the VR grooming successful her people erstwhile it’s offered again.

“We’ll besides beryllium moving successful people to springiness them a feeling of however you construe your VR acquisition to the existent world,” she said. “VR environments are going to beryllium progressively utilized to bid practitioners successful the field.”