Session 5: Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Guided live research activity.

In this activity, scholars will be divided into two groups. A translational research project with preliminary data, common for both teams, will be shared with the scholars at the beginning of the session. As an example, the project could be "Study of the role of X gene in Y cancer type, and therapeutic implications".

The scholars will have time to design which next experiments they would like to conduct, and in 10-minute shifts, the class instructor will be visiting each of the teams providing the results for those experiments in real time (i.e., drawing plots, western blots, etc. on the white board). During the 10 minutes the class instructor is providing results for one team, the other team will have time to design a new set of experiments for their next shift. After 4-5 shifts, the scholars will be given time to structure their results into a consistent story, and then each team will present their "paper" to the other team. During that presentation the whole class will be discussing the approaches taken, missing experiments or controls that might be important for their story to be consistent, etc.

The main goal of this session is that the scholars get familiarized with experimental design and interpretation of results to answer a specific scientific question, in a guided environment.