Tamara Bodnar, a fourth-year PhD student in Neuroscience, and Parker Holman, a second-year PhD student in Neuroscience, received the 2013 Let’s Talk Science CIHR-Synapse Award for Science Outreach.
The annual Let’s Talk Science CIHR-Synapse Award recognizes an outstanding, innovative, health research-related activity done by a Let’s Talk Science Outreach volunteer or pair of volunteers.
Bodnar and Holman developed a three-day program for high school students to increase awareness of the effects of alcohol on fetal development and the adult body. Students tested the effects of different concentrations of alcohol on brine shrimp eggs and adult round worms (C. elegans), and were encouraged to relate their observations to what would happen in an adult human.
Parker Holman, right, talks about alcohol’s impacts on the brain with a high school student.
Bodnar and Holman’s research focuses on the effects of alcohol on the developing brain. Their supervisor is Joanne Weinberg, a Professor in the Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences.
Let’s Talk Science is an award-winning, national, charitable outreach organization. They create and deliver unique learning programs and services that engage children, youth and educators in science, technology, engineering and math.
For more information about Bodnar and Holman’s Let’s Talk Science project, visit the NeuroDevNet website.