Quarterly

Since 2022, led by PhD student Jenny Martinez and Prof. Bowman, lab members have regularly visited the 8th grade Climate Leadership classroom of Michael Allaway at Vista Heritage Global Academy  in Santa Ana. In co-designing the lesson, we considered a handful of experiments and chose the best from the perspective of the students’ knowledge level, curricular focus, and available time/technology such as optical foldscope microscopes. We are in the process of refining the lesson and expect to share the details and outcomes with the broader educational community in a forthcoming publication.

Image below: Upper left) students viewing CaCO3 crystal fragments using Foldscopes. Upper right) Marquez Balingit and Jenny Martinez demonstrating optical birefringence of CaCO3 calcite. Lower left) Marquez assisting Foldscope use. Lower right) From left: Teacher Michael Allaway, PhD student Jenna Wardini, MSE undergrad Hyojoo Kang, PhD student Huiming Guo, Prof. Will Bowman, PhD student Jenny Martinez, PhD student Marquez Balingit, ChemE undergrad Jack Samaniego.

January 2024

Jane led the organization of Vista Middle and High School Visit to UCI. The visit included 3 UCI MSE Professors (Bowman, Ragan and Apelian), 7 UCI PhD/Masters students, 53 visiting students, and 5 chaperones.

May 2023

Hasti visited Main Street Elementary in Los Angeles’ in collaboration with UCI MSE GSA. They spent the day with 5 different classes, working with students on Foldscope and digital optical microscopes looking at evolution-related samples including plants, fruits, insects, and more.

Aug 2022

Huiming was elected to serve as the secretary of the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) Student Council (StC).

July 2022

Marquez gave a lab tour to 30 high school students. The event was organized by the Council of African American Parents, a community-based organization that works with families to demystify the college admissions process, provide direction to the students and parents, and expose them to life as college students. The students had a brief residential experience at UCI, and spent part of their time touring our in lab.

Huiming is serving as Secretary of the Student Council of the Microscopy Society of America.

Jenna Wardini is on the Student Council of the Microscopy Society of America. She is currently a Co-chair for the Pre-meeting Congress X60 (PMCx60) for Students, Postdocs, and Early-career Professionals in Microscopy and Microanalysis.

Hasti Vahidi is an Officer of the UC Irvine MSE Graduate Student Association . She is currently the Social Media Manager.

Komal and Hasti were invited panelists on a panel about the life, success and challenges of graduate students organized by the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

Pre-meeting Congress for Students, Postdocs and Early-career Professionals in Microscopy and Microanalysis

Inspiring students to pursue a STEM — and more specifically MSE — education and career requires effective mentorship at all levels of development. In addition to engagement in STEM curricula, pre-college and pre-graduate-school mentorship are also critical to steering students into STEM career paths. Inclusive excellence thus revolves around three main pillars: (i) Educational outreach to K-14 students to inspire curiosity in STEM, (ii) targeted mentorship outreach to middle/high school students to provide tangible guidance into undergraduate STEM degrees, and (iii) deep mentorship and access to professional opportunities for undergraduates to ensure pursuit of STEM careers or post-secondary degrees. The Bowman Lab acts on these pillars of outreach, while actively seeking opportunities to develop and engage in educational outreach.

In 2016, Will founded a new Pre-meeting Congress for Students, Postdocs and Early-career Professionals in Microscopy and Microanalysis, held on the weekend preceding the Microscopy and Microanalysis conference (M&M). M&M is the annual scientific conference of the Microscopy Society of America, and the world’s largest microscopy meeting. Details are available at the website of the Pre-meeting Congress.

Materials Science Club at UC Irvine

MatSci@UCI is a club for anyone interested in the field of Materials Science & Engineering. All engineering students are welcome to our meetings, but to be a full club member, you need to register to become a member of Material Advantage.