Bioengineering Honor Society - BioEHSC

This project has ended, but you can still support amazing Berkeley initiatives by visiting give.berkeley.edu. Your continued support of our students, faculty and staff will ensure that Berkeley remains the #1 public university. Go Bears!

The Bioengineering High School Competition (BioEHSC) is an annual group research and design competition at UC Berkeley. To help high school students explore bioengineering, BioEHSC asks contestants to identify a problem in medicine and design a bioengineering solution in six weeks. Contestants will work in groups of four or five, and receive mentorship and advice from a bioengineering undergraduate researcher (student). Afterwards, contestants will create a research poster on their projects and present their findings to a panel of professors and graduate students in a final research symposium.

While this is going to be our fourth year running BioEHSC, we are focusing our outreach efforts to schools whose students come from underserved communities in the Bay Area. Next year, we are planning to host at least 30 teams, accounting for 120-150 high school students in the Bay Area in April 2017. By participating in BioEHSC, students can:

1. Learn more about bioengineering, which BLS data show as one of the fastest-growing professions in the United States.
2. Interact with faculty and students at UC Berkeley, the #1 public university and one of the top engineering institutions in the world, with distinguished professors and alumni.
3. Become familiar with the engineering design process, which will help students gain critical thinking and analysis skills important for every profession.

In addition, outstanding teams and their respective high schools will receive prizes, ranging from gift cards for winning competitors to scientific equipment donated to the competitors’ high school.

With the funds raised from the potential crowdfunding campaign, we would be able to pay for printing of research posters, the cost of materials to create more meaningful educational demo or workshop events during the competition, enough food to feed over 200 attendees (students, their teachers, faculty judges, and volunteers) on the day of the competition, and provide bioengineering-related educational classroom prizes for the winning teams. Furthermore, funds would go into subsidizing or waiving the registration fee for students that demonstrate financial need in future competitions. This would allowing many more students passionate about bioengineering to participate and allow us to consider expanding our program to regions outside the Bay Area.

Funds surpassing our $5000 goal would be donated to BioEHS to support general student group activities including academic, professional development, and community service events including educational outreach events similar to BioEHSC.

Your gift today would ensure that we would be able to continue educating future generations of bioengineers!

For more information, visit: http://bioehs.berkeley.edu/hsc/