Education and Public Outreach (EPO) activities in IPTAI are designed around three areas of emphasis: 

First: educational workshops for undergraduates and high school teachers where participants actively collect and interpret data from laboratory and field experiments.  

Second: public outreach through a web site with premiere-quality digital media including animations and video that illustrate how and why scientists conduct research in deep mines.

Third: mentoring undergraduate and graduate research at Indiana, Princeton, and Tennessee universities. These astrobiology students will work with faculty to design a series of web-based quantitative and investigative activities for all pre-college students, but highlighting the diverse careers of leading women on the IPTAI team.

Image: drill rig at High Lake mine, Nunuvat Territory, Canada

Purpose and Goals

Education and public outreach in the IPTAI proposal is targeted at recruiting, encouraging, and facilitating retention of underrepresented or minority undergraduates and teachers. Our efforts will be mainly within the U.S. but likely will include participants from Canada and South Africa. We will specifically design materials for pre-college girls and for workshop participation by undergraduates and high-school teachers. The annually-hosted workshops will be the most visible and costly component of our EPO effort. Our past experience indicates, however, that a one-on-one approach is the most effective way to foster genuine engagement with future scientists and science educators. Workshops will target U.S. minority undergraduate students and will be supervised by an international group of mentors. Internships and workshops will be conducted primarily at laboratories in the U.S. but also will be conducted in tandem with field experiments at mines in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa.

Image: High Lake camp buildings

Our over-arching EPO goals are:

• To engage students and teachers in multidisciplinary team research using internship and workshop activities. Particular effort will be devoted to minority and female students.
• To involve undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers in field experiments at deep mines. Field research will be supervised by faculty members with extensive underground experience in order to ensure attention to issues of training and safety.
• To increase student awareness of career opportunities in astrobiology and in related growth industries such as geomicrobiology, biotechnology, bioremediation and environmental engineering.
• To recruit undergraduate majors and graduate students in astrobiology and geomicrobiology.
• To foster transfer of innovative technologies between academic, government, and industrial research groupsthrough collaborative geomicrobiological research.

Image: Helicopter brings supplies to High Lake camp

The proposed educational experiences will explore the unusual geochemical and microbial environments that exist within and around the world's deepest mines. Astrobiology internships and workshops will encompass environmental field techniques, microbial and geochemical laboratory exercises, and tutorials on a broad range of topics including controversial aspects of environmental remediation, origins of life, and genetic engineering.