News & Events at the Bradbury Science Museum
Read about all the latest news and events
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Looking forward
Exciting things ahead.
The Museum's Director, Linda Deck
As I finish my tenth year as Director of the Bradbury Science Museum, I recognize the potential for more progress and partnerships than ever before. Please allow me to share these exciting developments with you.
Educators Pam Dresher and Mel Strong have made all the Bradbury STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) educational offerings completely their own. In addition to mastering our current outreach, they are also designing plans to fine-tune these programs to maximize their positive impact on Northern New Mexico K-12 STEM learners and teachers. This refinement must be a mutually fulfilling endeavor, and Pam has been working with regional educators to understand these systems fully. She and Mel will start testing prototypes of new Bradbury programs in the fall.
Keep an eye out for announcements, as we will provide some of these programs in conjunction with our nonprofit partner, the Bradbury Science Museum Association (BSMA). We would like these educational offerings to benefit from our greater-impact programs such as BSMA’s scholarships for field trips program, which received many applicants from schools in our region. Our work with the BSMA will likely grow in other ways this year, including more volunteer opportunities for community members to join us in STEM outreach.
The project of increasing our relationships with our scientists, engineers, and managers holds my personal attention. The Bradbury exists to tell the stories of the world-changing work performed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. I am excited to continually deepen my knowledge of the Lab programs, and design optimal ways the Bradbury can collaborate to fulfill our mutual needs for communicating this monumental work.
Much of this communication is accomplished through Gallery exhibits and our NOTEs (National Outreach Traveling Exhibits) program. Last year we created an exhibit featuring the research of Karissa Sanbonmatsu and her team on the Ribosome Machine, that explained how it functions as a 3D nanoprinter of proteins and why this work happens at the Lab. It is now at the Houston Museum of Health.
Similarly, we are working on an exhibit with our Theoretical (T) Division, that is home to theoretical research at the Lab. These displays represent research topics that most likely do not come to mind when you envision the Lab’s work, and for that exact reason are important to feature at the Bradbury and send to other science museums around the country.
The topic for the T Division exhibit this year is how the Lab scientists collaborated in creating the field of mathematical immunology, founding GenBank (the first database of genetic sequences), and creating the HIV database. The display will highlight advances made in understanding the immune system, leading toward a computationally-designed HIV vaccine. This work could only happen here at Los Alamos National Laboratory, making it a perfect story for the Bradbury to tell. We are working with Ideum, a leader in the world of touch-table technology, to create an exhibit that will be highly interactive and encourage visitors to follow their own desire to explore.
Each of these Bradbury projects promises more ways to learn about science, and experience and appreciate the work done at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I invite you to enjoy as many as you can. I will continually update you all about our progress in future newsletters. Thanks for reading, and for your interest in the Bradbury!
You can read the entire issue of the July publication here.
