"Structure and function" is a core concepts common to biology, chemistry, and biochemistry education. Currently, educators in these disciplines address this concept in a subject specific manner. A plethora of public biological databases, tools, and resources offer opportunities to learn about structure and function of biological molecules that are currently underutilized. Interdisciplinary approaches may help develop a deeper understanding structure function relationships. Case studies are being developed to introduce students to molecular structure visualization and help them bridge the gap between structure & function as well as biology & chemistry. These slides and the website presents Molecular CaseNet's current efforts in developing Molecular Case Studies. Look forward to your feedback on these efforts and hopefully to working with you to develop new cases and/or test current offerings. 

This is the site for the two reports on Data Science Undergraduate Education that arose from the National Academies Committee I served on. 

Summary: Increasing user diversity is a key component of maintaining and expanding digital collections. Diverse users are more engaged, and engage in ways that are both novel and serendipitous - often creating uses for our data that the curators couldn't imagine. However, increasing our user base can also serve another goal - providing an entrance ramp for people who maintain views, locations, and life histories that are underrepresented in our ranks. Here my colleagues and I demonstrate how digital collections can help lower barriers to participation across multiple axes, including cost, location and disability status. Our goal in highlighting this is to show the broader impacts of our work, and how through helping people understand biological diversity we can help improve the diversity within our own community.

Presenter: Dr. Joshua Adam Drew from the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, at Columbia University.