On Wednesday, April 16th, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology hosted junior and senior high school students from north Alabama for a DNA in Biotech mini-conference. Small groups of students from nearly every public and private high school in Madison County were in attendance.

Kelly East, the organization’s Vice President for Educational Outreach, shared her enthusiasm for the event and gave background on its timing.

According to East, the event is held toward the end of April to celebrate DNA Day, which occurs every year on April 25th. This is the same day that scientists published the double helix structure of DNA in 1953.

“This is a way for us to get out into the community and celebrate DNA day and have a day where we can have a big impact on students,” East said.

East said HudsonAlpha’s goal for the mini-conference was to host an event where the entire organization could positively influence Madison County students.

“The concept of this day is to try to curate essentially the best shadowing day we could build and be able to impact 150 students,” East said.

At the event, students were split into three tracks based on their interests: agriculture, cancer, and neuroscience. Attendees were selected by their high schools.

“The students are treated as professionals and are moving through what feels like a professional conference by being here where there’s large group sessions, small breakout sessions, and intentional opportunities for networking and building those power skills of communicating and talking to people that they maybe don’t know,” East said.

During the conference, students asked questions and heard from HudsonAlpha employees working in the areas they were interested in.

The high schoolers even participated in activities relating to breeding in agriculture and genetic counseling. Students in the neuroscience track learned about emerging technologies that can or will potentially be used to treat various neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative conditions.

East said the event allowed students to “… talk to people working in those fields, do some hands-on work and see behind the scenes into the labs and some of the companies on our campus that are actively working in those fields every day.”

The event, sponsored by Redstone Federal Credit Union, was free for participating students. The sponsorship helped provide meals, venue costs, and logistical support, such as transportation and substitute teacher expenses.

Recognizing the potential for broader educational impact, HudsonAlpha sought to extend the event’s influence beyond the students in attendance and to the educators accompanying them.

“By having the teachers in the room here, our hope is that they will learn things that they can take back into their classrooms and into conversations with even more students that couldn’t be here today in person,” East added.

East encouraged broader community awareness and involvement, emphasizing that the DNA and Biotech event represents one of the numerous outreach initiatives HudsonAlpha’s educational team spearheads.

“The reason that we exist within education at HudsonAlpha is to light the fires in students’ interests around genomics and biotechnology and really invest in inspiring and training our Alabama students to be the bioscience workforce that we need tomorrow,” East said.