Breakfast of Science Champions 2016 brought over 550 middle school students from across the Columbus City School District to the OSU campus on the morning of Nov. 9.  This year, 14 different host sites from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Nursing, and Pharmacy participated. From the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, 8 different PIs along with their research groups were involved with the event, creating hands-on lab activities for the visiting students. This is an important event because it brings these middle schoolers into active research labs for a day and gives them the opportunity to meet and interact with faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students at OSU. For many, this is their first time on the OSU campus, and we want those impressions to be positive. Breakfast of Science Champions also offers an opportunity for our own students to become directly involved with outreach events, another important aspect of the educational experience.

Our department hosted ~50 students with the help from our PI's who participated from The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: Dr. Shafaat, Dr. Baker, Dr. Badu-Taiwah, Dr. Brunelli, Dr. Nagib, Dr. McGrier, and Dr. RajanBabu.

Host sites: Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center, Center for Applied Plant Sciences, Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Psychology, Psychology Brain Experience, Center for Cosmology and Astro Particle Physics, Center for Emergent Materials, Departments of Astronomy and Physics, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, Biological Sciences Greenhouse, Department of Neuroscience, Department of Linguistics, Ohio 4-H Youth Development, Department of Entomology, Department of Plant Pathology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering