A group of Melanie Fields’ biology students will present a 12-minute platform talk titled “Something Fishy Develops in an Introductory High School Biology Course” in a concurrent session at the professional 2010 International Zebrafish Development and Genetics Conference, held in Madison, Wisconsin, June 16-20. In their presentation, the students will present the methods and results of their zebrafish independent research projects.

The students will also describe how they participated in BioEYES, a program developed in cooperation with the Carnegie Institute of Baltimore that exposes school-age children to science through zebrafish development. In the week-long program in early May, Fields’ biology students partnered with Hearst Elementary School’s third and fourth grade classes and, through hands-on lessons using lab equipment and zebrafish, conveyed a basic understanding of embryology, cell structure, DNA, and genetics. In turn, the Hearst students visited the SFS biology lab, where several of the biology students gave demonstrations of their independent research projects involving horseshoe crabs, blue crabs, sea anemones, planarians, bay grasses, GloFish (fluorescent zebrafish), fish shoaling behavior, and weakly electric fish and frogs.