Welcome to BioJam

Growing community through art, culture, and biomaking

2020 & 2021 BioJam Teen Mentors

Mission

​Our mission is to engage teens through their own creativity and culture in bioengineering/biomaterial design and create pathways for them to share their learning in their home communities.​ 

Vision

Our vision is to: 
1. Nurture teen knowledge, confidence, and curiosity as they grow into science practitioners and educators
2. Provide a research and training opportunity for scientists
3. Create accessible entry points for community engagement in biotechnology
GROW
MAKE
CONNECT

What?

BioJam is a summer academic program that engages high school students from underserved communities in the Bay Area, California in bioengineering and human-centered design.
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The BioJam leadership team integrates Stanford undergraduates, PhD students, and professors in STEM with Bay Area educators and community organizations.

​Our program starts with a 2-week synchronous summer camp and continues with late summer activities in which teens develop community engagement activities based on what they learned during camp. Our focus includes grown biomaterials, biomaterial recipes, circuitry components and live mycelium. 

Why?

  • Engage teens in explorative biodesign as a platform for them to share and connect to broader communities in biodesign conversations.
  • Create a model for university/high school mentorship that results in further collaborations with education departments of science museums.
  • Create a framework for how science can be shared with under resourced communities using a framing that is mindful of equity, access and anchoring to culture.
  • Put into action the goals and ideas generated at the Learn.Design.Compute symposium
  • Seed potential Biodesign Challenge teams.​

Press

Check out our recent article in ISSUES in Science and Technology, Bioengineering Everywhere, for Everyone and podcast episode in ​The Ongoing Transformation