Tonja L. Williams
Nashville School of the Arts
Biology

My partner Hannah and I were introduced to several people in the biomedical engineering department and we interviewed them about the research they were conducting.  We talked to Dr. Kevin Seale about his work on T-cells.  We spoke with a graduate student named Andreas who was working on cardiomyocytes.  Andreas is working on his PhD.  We spoke with a few others.  We also got a chance to work with Phil Sampson.  Phil took us into the clean room where we were able to observe his research.  This was actually pretty cool.  We went twice.  Hannah and I also got a chance to work with LabView and I got a chance to go on the laser tour with Dr. Duco Jansen. 

The curriculum that I am writing is on cellular transport.  I chose this particular topic because when we were in the clean room, we talked about cellular transport and even trying to isolate cells by having them fall into different wells.  Topics I am covering include diffusion, osmosis, active transport, passive transport, sodium-potassium pump, voltage-gated channels, and hypertension.  I was able to find some cool lab experiments for my students and it should be fun and useful information for them.