Are you a graduate student or undergraduate student working in a research lab at UIUC? Did you ever wish you could talk to a scientist to learn more about a specific career path before college? MMLI's "Human library" provides that option to our campers (rising 10th-12th graders) who are learning about chemistry and AI research at UIUC.
Date: Wednesday, July 17th - 10AM-12PM
What does it involve? Talk to high schoolers about what you do in your lab, what inspired you to pursue that, and answer questions they have about college, science, grad school, and their summer camp science project!
Commitment: 1-2 hours of your time (based on your interest/availability)
Campers will be working on a week long project identifying a topic that interests them and identifying ways to use MMLI's molecular synthesis and/or AI tools to help them out, but will also have opportunities to explore other areas of research at the university. The human library allows campers to "check out books" AKA talk to graduate student/undergrad researchers from various fields to learn more about a topic or career path (without actually reading!) so we like getting folks from a variety of fields. Human library volunteers can provide additional context for their work, or give them a broader scope of the kind of research going on at UIUC - usually students just really like asking about what you do in lab, why you chose that topic, etc. The students really enjoy getting to talk to real scientists who aren't their camp leaders for the week, and our volunteers enjoy getting to talk to students who are filled with curiosity!
Sign up here: https://forms.gle/S2p8oy2Aa3TgxPCj7or e-mail abdulla3@illinois.edu