Save the Date for The Baxter Center Symposium

Join us at our Symposium as we celebrate 15 years of The Baxter Center for Science Education. This year we will be holding the Symposium on Monday, May 12, 2025 from 8-3:30pm at the Chicago Botanic Garden, with a fun celebration after. Join us and over 100 Chicagoland middle and high school science teachers for a day of learning with presentations and activities led by talented speakers to bring back to the classroom. In doing so, we hope that educators will feel empowered to bring the new tools they learned back into the classroom to enrich student experiences. Check out previous programs here!

REGISTRATION WILL OPEN ON MARCH 17, 2025

Overview

• Date: Monday, May 12, 2025 from 8-3:30pm. The day will start with registration and breakfast from 8-9am, with our keynote at 9am. All guests are cordially invited to a post-Symposium 15-year celebration from 3:30-5pm.
• Location: Chicago Botanic Garden (1000 Lake Cook Rd, Glencoe, IL 60022)
• Audience: Middle & High School Science Teachers and Admin (All are welcome!)
• Food: Light breakfast, lunch and refreshments included
• Cost: Free attendance and parking
• Perks: Receive free goody bags for attending and enter in lab giveaways!

Attendees have the chance to...

• Explore hands-on lab activities, sessions on social and environmental justice, and more!
• Meet other science teachers from the greater Chicagoland
• Receive goody bags and enter giveaways! 
• Earn up to 5 ISBE professional development credits for attendance

Keynote by Dr. Ashty S. Karim 

We are excited to welcome Dr. Ashty S. Karim as this year's keynote speaker. He is an assistant professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. With a foundation in chemical engineering and synthetic biology, he works at the intersection of biology and chemistry developing technologies to efficiently harness biological systems to convert waste to value. His research group develops biological molecules, systems, and processes to enable global sustainability, with a particular focus on increasing our ability to biorecover from waste, biorecycle waste materials, and biocapture waste carbon. He earned his B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. Embracing the academic mission of developing both knowledge and people, Ashty has also spent the last several years co-developing new educational frameworks, courses, and workshops for learning and teaching synthetic biology. Serving as the first Director of Research for Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology, Ashty also helped maintain and expand the Research Experience for Teachers program run through The Baxter Center.

Science and Metabolic Mixology: Accelerating Industrial Biotechnology

Industrial biotechnology is one of the most attractive, emerging approaches to address the demand for carbon-negative technologies posed by the accelerating climate crisis. Unfortunately, biotechnology design-build-test cycles—iterations of re-engineering organisms to test new sets of biological combinations—remains costly, risky, and slow. One key limitation is that cellular survival objectives are often diametrically opposed to the objectives of engineers. Cell-free synthetic biology allows us to rethink how we meet this global challenge by facilitating rapid building of prototypes with biology. Using cell-free technologies, we can conduct precise, complex biomolecular transformations in cell lysates without living, intact organisms. In other words, cocktails of cellular machinery harvested from cells that are broken open can be used to build biological systems and processes. By harnessing the advantages of cell-free synthetic biology, we’ve developed in vitro approaches to design, build, and test enzymes and pathways to inform cellular design.

In this talk, I will describe our efforts to reimagine R&D for industrial biotechnology. I will describe the scientific developments that informed the design of sustainable bioprocesses currently being used at LanzaTech, a Skokie-based biotechnology company. In addition, I will discuss our efforts at Northwestern University to define how we teach synthetic biology and train future leaders of the field. Throughout the talk I will sprinkle in a little about my backstory, the culture I try to create, and how I try to bridge the world of education and research.

Open Call for Presenters 

Interested in presenting at The Baxter Center Symposium? Do you have a new science activity, tool, or approach you would like to share with other teachers? We're excited to welcome fresh content and new session topics, and can't wait to hear everyone's perspectives. Click the button at the bottom of the page to apply by Monday, March 10th. Final decisions will be made and applicants will be notified by Monday, March 24th. Don't hesitate to apply if you're excited to bring something to the conference - we'd love to hear what you have to offer!

FAQs

• What can you expect from us? If your proposal is accepted, we're happy to support you as you develop your session for The Baxter Center Symposium!
• What do we expect from you? First and foremost, we expect you to bring your love of science and excitement for whatever you’re sharing with other educators! Beyond that, we ask that our presenters 1. Provide us with information for the website such as session title, description, a photo, and a short bio of yourself. 2. Communicate to us what you need for your presentation to be successful 3. Be on time and present 4. Enjoy yourself as you help build a community of science educators who will take these tools back to their classrooms.
• What types of activities can I propose during my breakout session? While we've had some messy science in the past, we will not be in lab or classroom spaces at the Chicago Botanic Garden, which shifts some of the materials and tools we can use. We're excited to see your ideas for sessions that could work in this context, and we're open to working with you on this!
• Should my session fit a theme? We encourage presenters to share something teachers can “bring back to their classroom” the next day! Our Symposium sessions usually include some sort of hands-on lab or activity that educators can immediately implement.   
• How long should my presentation or activity be? Breakout sessions will be one hour. We recommend that folks plan for about 45 minutes, with 15 minutes open for Q&A or discussion. 
• What are examples of topics that I can present? Check out last year's breakout sessions here!