10/2/2025 Ben Libman
The student-led Mobile Bioengineering Lab, founded by senior Katie Zobus through the Biomedical Engineering Journal Club, has earned a GIANT grant from the Grainger IDEA Institute to expand its K–12 outreach. The program brings hands-on workshops in genetics, regenerative medicine, and bioengineering to middle school classrooms, helping spark early interest in STEM. With new workshops planned for 2025–26 and an additional partner school, the initiative continues to grow, making complex science accessible and inspiring the next generation of engineers.
Written by Ben Libman
In the modern educational landscape, encouraging younger students to enter STEM fields is critical. Yet a variety of barriers still exist. Elementary and high school students are often not exposed to these courses until later in their education, making them less likely to pursue STEM long term. Due to bioengineering’s complexity and the relative newness of the field compared to other STEM subjects, its topics are not commonly explored in a K-12 setting.
Katie Zobus, a senior in Bioengineering, is the president and founder of the Biomedical Engineering Journal Club (BMEJC), a campus organization dedicated to promoting inclusion through hands-on learning experiences in the life sciences and engineering. Her own educational experiences have made her acutely aware of the challenges with accessing these fields. “Having grown up in a rural school district, I had limited opportunities to explore STEM and the pathways that come with it.”
Her solution, detailed in a recent paper published by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), was the Mobile Bioengineering Lab. Zobus and her team developed a workshop series for International Prep Academy in Champaign to teach middle schoolers about the power and potential of bioengineering. “8th-grade students are at an impressionable point in their education,” explained Zobus. “Having early and positive exposure to STEM can influence their choice to take more STEM-oriented classes, which may later shape college and career paths.” Bioengineering students Asheera Kaul and Shriya Wagholikar, along with professors Caroline Cvetkovic and Holly Golecki, were officially added to the GIANT team this year, further expanding the program. “Through initiatives like this, students can see themselves being an active part of the scientific community,” said Kaul.
The Mobile Bioengineering Lab proved so promising it recently earned a GIANT grant (Grassroots Initiatives to Address Needs Together) from the IDEA Institute in the Grainger College of Engineering, helping continue the program in 2025-2026. The goal of the GIANT program is to support “scholarship, innovation, collaboration, and leadership that expand opportunities and strengthen our engineering community.”
BMEJC volunteers designed seven different workshops in collaboration with the classroom’s science teacher for the Mobile Bioengineering Lab. The workshops included a basic introduction to bioengineering, lessons on regenerative medicine, genetics, and gene circuits, and even guidance on presenting original research. Principal investigator Caroline Cvetkovic enjoyed seeing her own pupils turn into such effective communicators, saying “it was rewarding to see so many of my students step out into an active teaching role as volunteers. It helped to reinforce the value of the program from all angles.”
The students’ favorite workshop was extracting DNA from strawberries; according to the paper, they were “astounded to see the clump of extracted strawberry DNA within the solution.” The team also believes in the power of near-peer mentorship from the undergraduate students teaching the workshops. “That type of lively environment in the classroom and excitement to do our hands-on experiments is something that we look forward to,” said Wagholikar. “It was easier for students to approach [us] with questions or general conversation due to us being closer in age. We were able to walk around and talk with the students, which allowed them to ask questions personally if they were hesitant to ask them in front of the whole class.”
Zobus and BMEJC are excited to continue and expand on the program in the coming year, adding more workshops to expand the students’ horizons. New workshops for the 25-26 school year will include courses on tissue engineering, fluorescence microscopy and soft robotics. The team will also add another Unit 4 school, Garden Hills Academy in Champaign. “I’m very excited to see how this group takes complex topics and puts them in reach for the younger students,” said Cvetkovic. “It’s one of my personal goals for bioengineering education and this team is leading the way.”
The team wants anyone with a passion for bioengineering education to be able to replicate their work. In addition to the full paper, instructions on setting up your own mobile bioengineering lab are available on the group’s website. Students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign interested in learning more or volunteering can fill out the BMEJC interest form.
Beyond the GIANT Award from the IDEA Institute, the Mobile Bioengineering Lab would also like to recognize the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) Inclusive Excellence Award (2024–2025) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for providing the seed funding to develop this initiative. They would also like to recognize the staff at IGB, International Prep Academy, and Garden Hills Academy for making it possible for this initiative to come alive.