From Sixth Grade to Real World: UNH will create biotech pipeline
ew Hampshire is home to a booming biotechnology industry — with established corporations as well as start-ups on the forefront of using biology to address modern medical challenges. No longer the stuff of science fiction, biotechnology and regenerative medicine as a means to treat and cure diseases is now an area of focus in mainstream medicine.
But who will be among the next generation of workers, managers, thinkers and innovators to lead this rapidly growing Granite State industry?
The project, called NH CREATES the Future: the NH Collaborative for Regenerative Medicine Education and Training for Engineers and Scientists of the Future (NH CREATES), will engage middle and high school teachers and students in Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Dover and Barrington as well as Lawrence, Massachusetts.
NH CREATES is funded by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health.
“NH CREATES is a training mechanism to supply the regenerative medicine and biotechnology industry with an educated workforce pipeline so that, in turn, this burgeoning industry can fulfill its potential to cure disease,” says Carmela Amato-Wierda, associate professor of materials science at UNH and principal investigator on the grant. Kelley Thomas, the Hubbard Professor of Genomics at UNH and director of UNH’s Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, is co-principal investigator. Amato-Wierda notes that 78% of New Hampshire’s biotechnology industry reports a shortage of skilled workers, and 25% of the current biotechnology workforce is over the age of 55.
NH CREATES will create a web of collaboration between middle and high schools, higher education and the region’s biotechnology industry to enhance STEM learning and career pathways with several initiatives, including a summer institute for biomed training for teachers, and more scholarships for under-represented students to attend an enhanced UNH Tech Camp in the summer, creating a biotech STEM ecosystem in which industry, higher education and K-12 partners work to assist students as they work their way from middle school to high school to college to biotech careers.
In addition to reaching up to 1,400 students from the state’s most ethnically diverse school districts over the next five years, NH CREATES will engage faculty and staff from higher education institutions across the state to advise teachers participating in the summer institute.
Says Amato-Wierda: “We want to educate middle and high school students about regenerative medicine and instill excitement about how we need their future contributions to propel this field forward in the years to come.”