 It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Nancy Sey to give the next talk. Nancy received her undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth, so just down the road. And she finished her PhD in neuroscience just recently at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, which I know some other people in this room had spent time at. Nope, he's gone. Her research for her PhD, combined wet bench lab experiments with computational approach to study the genetics in the neurobiology of drug abuse behaviors. After graduation, or actually even before she finished her thesis defense, she was awarded a fellowship that ECIB, the Education and Community Involvement Branch of NHGRI, holds jointly with the American Society of Human Genetics for a fellow who's interested in transitioning to genomics education. And this is a program that's been going on for several years. Nancy was ahead of the curve. In fact, Ghana was ahead of the curve because they did DNA day a couple weeks ago, courtesy of Nancy's visit to Ghana. Nancy was actually born in Ghana but has been in the U.S. since age 14, I believe. And she's going to present a slide presentation and talk about her experience visiting schools in Ghana. So thank you everyone for staying for the afternoon session. It is with great pleasure that I get to discuss my trip to Ghana, taking DNA day there. So this trip would not have been possible, as successful without the help of two incredible individuals, so namely Tessa Montague and Fred Rubino, who volunteered their time to help me run the program. So before I get started, I just want to orient everybody to where Ghana is. So Ghana is a country within the western part of Africa, and we are known for our rich culture, including cocoa, which is used to make delicious chocolate that I'm sure many of you enjoy, and as well as our rich culture of dance and food. So I traveled to Ghana last month, and while I was there, I had the opportunity to visit three schools in two regions of Ghana. So the first one was the Accra region, and then the second one being the Ashanti region. So in Accra, which is the capital of Ghana, I got to visit the American International School, and in the Ashanti region, I visited Yasantua High School and then Upukware High School. So a majority of my talk will be focused on the high schools, but before that I want to share a bit about my visit to the American International School. So I got connected to American International School, or AIS for short, through a former postdoc at the NIH, Dr. Shamika Thomas Poetry, who connected me to the headmistress of AIS. So the headmistress is pictured here. The headmistress really wanted to introduce her younger students to biomedical sciences very early on, and so when she found out about my trip, she really pushed for me to come visit the classrooms. So this here is a picture of me interacting with the students. So prior to my program with them, I wanted to get to know the students and then also have them get to know me. So we started off with some brief introductions where I asked them to share their names and then also shared your hobbies. So I found out that there are an interesting bunch of students, so they are interested in lots of hobbies, including music, dancing, playing video games, and then one student shared that your hobby is just hanging out with your parents, which I thought was very sweet. So after the introductions, I also gave an introduction of myself, and I got to talk to them about my life as a scientist. So following the career talk, I engaged the students in a neuroscience activity. So what we're doing here is that the brain caps that you see up there was the neuroscience activity, so it was a brain coloring activity. And the objective for this activity is that the facilitator, which was me, I asked the students to just color the different loops of the brain, and then as they were doing that coloring, I got to engage them in conversations about the different functions of the brain. So one thing I wasn't expecting was that I wasn't expecting the teachers to also get involved in the program, but this particular teacher here got really into the activity herself and she really wanted a picture of her shown, so that is a picture of her, and the brain that she colored. So following the activity, I asked the students, I told them to ask me any questions that they would like answered. So once I got a lot of intriguing questions, one student told me though that she really wants to be an astronaut, and she was worried that her spaceship would just blow up in space, and I told her that although I'm not a trained astronaut, I am quite confident that there are protocols in place to make sure that that does not happen, so she was satisfied with that answer. So this kind of wraps up my visit to the American International School. So following that, my colleagues, Tessa and Fred, got to join me for these two other schools, so Pokuwari and Yasantoa Schools. So a little bit of background on who these individuals are. So Yasantoa was an Ashanti warrior that led the Ashanti region into battle against the British Empire, and then Pokuwari, who was pictured over there, so he was a chief for the Ashanti region during the 1700s. So these schools are named after these prominent individuals in Ghanaian history. So our visit to Pokuwari and Yasantoa was slightly different than my solo visit to AIS, in that this was a whole day's affair. So we started off by doing a lab donation to the schools, so I had collected surplus lab materials at UNC that I had shipped to Ghana to be able to donate to the science classrooms. And then following that, my colleagues and I gave a career talk where we got to introduce ourselves and share our journey to science. So during my career talk, I got to tell them what DNA day is and why this year's celebration is particularly important and significant. And at Yasantoa School, I got to share this slightly embarrassing picture of myself. So picture there is me and my older sister, and then over here is also like my older sister, who actually attended Yasantoa. So this picture with the three of us were taken during one of our Sunday visits to her at Yasantoa. So I got to share this anecdote with the students. And following that, we had a wide variety of labs that we engaged the students in. So I will tell you a little bit about the labs that we had. So we had three main activities, and then we had like one optional activity where we used that optional activity to fill in time when there were some down times. So the first activity that we had was the pipette practice. So here are pictures of the students during the pipette practice. So before we started the activities, though, we had my colleagues and I had brought lab coats and goggles for the students to dress up in them. And the reason why we wanted to do this is because there's something about putting on the white coat that really makes you feel like a scientist. And that was the image that we wanted to project to the students that, yes, you are a true scientist. So on the bottom here is pictures of the Yasantoa girls just having a little fun with the micro pipette. And the picture that is shown on my right here is taken... It was taken at Popokawari, and it's one of my favorite pictures from the program is because this guy, his name is Eugene, so Eugene's got so much into pipettin and wanted to perfect his pipettin skills that he actually skipped a portion of his lunchtime just to pipet some more. And I thought that was very beautiful. So after pipettin, we moved on to our second activity, which was a DNA extraction. So traditionally, I know this activity has been done using strawberries, but strawberries are not native to Ghana, so it was going to be difficult for us to get strawberries just for this particular activity. So we substituted strawberries for the students on saliva, so they got to see DNA extracted using their own saliva. And now I will share some pictures from that activity. So these are a montage of pictures from the Yasantoa girls with the students showing the DNA that they had extracted. They had a lot of fun. And if you see in this blown-up picture here, you can just see the awe and amazement in the students' eyes as they got to see their own DNA extracted. And we took the same set of activities to the Boy School, so Upukawari School, where once again you can just see the awe and amazement in your eyes as they got to see their own DNA easily extracted using materials that is easily present in their own environment. And that was one of the things that they really appreciated about this specific activity is that they could use materials that they can easily find in their own environment. So following the DNA extraction, we had one last major lab that was a forensics lab. So this particular lab was donated to us by a company called Mini-PCR. So before starting with the forensics lab though, the students were required to know and become familiar with gel electrophoresis analysis, which is just a method that scientists used to separate molecules of different sizes. So to make sure that the students understand this method, we brought it home by grouping them into three different groups. So we had one group of students where it was just made up of one student and then we had another group made up of 10 students and then we had another one made up of 19 students. So we asked the students to move through this maze that is made with chairs so the picture, the black and white picture is them moving through that maze and what they grasped from this little activity is that the person that was alone, so this student was representative of a small molecule, they were a lot faster at moving through the maze than the groups that were made up of 10 and then the 19 students. So once we were satisfied that they knew the basis of gel electrophoresis, we moved on to the Forensics Lab. So the Forensics Lab is a hypothetical case where a hypothetical prisoner whose initials is J.M. is currently serving time for a crime that he has maintained that he did not commit but because he had maintained that he did not commit the crime the court has authorized a DNA analysis. So the students got to act as forensic scientists to prove that J.M. had committed the crime or whether somebody else had done it. So here are pictures from the Forensics Lab, so on the top here you're seeing that the student is loading the DNA material so they actually got to load actual DNA material. So DNA from J.M., the person that is currently in prison they got to load DNA from the victim as well as evidence and then DNA samples from two other suspects and then they also got to see the jail run using the material that was donated to us by mini-PCR and spoiler alert they found that J.M. did not commit the crime so it was somebody else. So lastly just kind of like to tie everything together. We wanted the students to showcase what they've learned through the day so shout out to ASHG for allowing us to use your essay prompt for the 2023 essay contest so the students will end of this month to submit your responses to this essay prompt for a chance to win any of the prizes that is listed here. So I've already received about 15 submissions which is really great because I had only anticipated maybe like five or seven students submitting essays. So to start to tie everything together, my colleagues and I had a lot of fun running this program but at the end of the day it wasn't about us it was about the students and what they got from the day. We learned from them how we can improve future programs if we run future programs and they had glowing reviews for us so one thing that they told us was that it was such an awesome experience to see their own DNA being extracted from their saliva. One student also said that it had encouraged them to study hard and also to choose the right career path and then one comment that we constantly kept getting from almost all of the students that we visited was that they would like to see the program expanded to other high schools in Ghana so that their friends can have the opportunity to get what they had been able to like get from the day with us. So this has inspired my colleagues and I to start planning for the 2024 program and for the 2024 program we wanted to look something different. We wanted to be bigger and better. So instead of just going to three schools we're going to be expanding to five plus schools so we're aiming for maybe seven or eight schools, high schools in Ghana with a combination of boys schools and then also girls schools and we also want to continue with the lab equipment donation because that is something that was very impactful for the teachers. They kept thinking us throughout the whole day saying that one of the equipment that we had donated to them their school has not had that equipment for the past years so whenever the students have to do an exam using that equipment they have to borrow it from some other school so having your own was just very impactful for them. And then another thing that the teachers called for was a training session just for the teachers themselves because they also want to participate in DNA Day. So we're going to incorporate a training session so that the teachers themselves can continue to bring science alive for the students when my colleagues and I are not there. And then lastly we will also like to highlight training opportunities and resources for both the teachers and also the students. And this is because when my colleagues and I were giving our talk we highlighted opportunities that we received because we were in the U.S. and we do not want to communicate to them that the only way that you can become a successful scientist is by being abroad. We want them to see some of the beautiful science that has happened on the African continent. So this is where the lab visit comes in. So when I was in Ghana I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Ophori Aqua who is part of the H3 Africa initiative and also the director for the West African Medicine Center that is currently being built on the east leg on campus in Ghana. So from our conversations he is committed to hosting the students for a lab tour during next year's program with the chance that this can matriculate into a summer research opportunity for the high school students in Ghana. And with that I would just like to thank you all for listening to my talk and also like thank my colleagues Tessa and Fred and as well as my colleagues at ECIB ASHG and then also some funding through HHMI. And I will take any questions. Nancy that was awesome thank you. My question is from me not online I know I've been doing it online so this is for me. But you've had an amazing experience going to Ghana taking DNA day to Ghana and I'm curious what approaches or recommendations would you make to NHGRI to the education community involvement branch as we are thinking about continuing to engage educators and students in international settings for DNA day. One thing I would like to say is that the students are hungry for these kinds of opportunities they're just so brilliant and I know that they're welcome to all kinds of opportunities that might become available to them through NHGRI. But another thing that I would like to add is that there are going to be challenges that might not be necessarily present in the U.S. so for example the forensics activity to make the gel the agarose gel mini-PCR gave me these tablets that all you had to do was put the tablet in water and then microwave it for 30 seconds to have the gel be ready but there was no microwave at any of the schools so we had to use a water bath so something that takes 30 seconds now became an hour process and then also there was a challenge where at one of the schools the lights ended up just going up for like an hour or so so my colleagues and I had to be creative in using that as a lunchtime for the students so these are challenges that might be present in international classrooms Ghana for example that might not necessarily be faced in the U.S. so planning for these challenges in advance is important and the other thing I would like to mention is the channels that you go through for collaboration is very important so while I'm extremely grateful for Tessa and Fred for coming along to help me a couple of the students mentioned that they wanted to also see more African scientists so it will be important to go through like African scientists as a chance of like collaboration for the students to see that okay this can also be you and that it doesn't have to be somebody else that is from a whole new continent so I had a question did you I saw laboratory exercises that you did did you try any computational exercises so we have not tried computational exercise with the students quite yet because they don't have an access to their own personalized laptops or computers do they have any at the schools even just like two or three workstations or laptops you could do something from at the schools or not so I so I talked to somebody else and they're actually interested in giving having some of their students like give career talks and also like research talks to the students so I'm currently working with the Yassin to our school to see if they can get like a computer station together so that the students can have this opportunity so maybe that's something that we can look to doing in the future as well my name is Cheryl Axena my ancestry is from Ghana so I want to let you know that a lot of the people here could be a scientist everybody could be a scientist so what advice would you give kids and other people who want to be a scientist thank you for that sweet question so my advice is to just keep doing what you're doing if you're interested in science that is something that begins very early on so if you have established that interest just keep doing what you're doing and hopefully you have a community of other people that even if you're not scientists are going to be supportive of you and don't let anybody tell you that you can't do it because you're a lion thank you very much