From Renewable to Solar Energy: BioBus’ path to growth and sustainability

Written by Latasha Wright

Why Science Outreach!

First I need to let you know who I am.  I am Latasha Wright, a cis-gendered African American woman from rural Mississippi. I was the youngest of 5 kids. My mom was a stay at home mom. My dad was a longshoreman.  Neither went to college, but they instilled in me the importance of education.  Every day afterschool, my father would ask me what I learned at school today.  I was a precocious kid who loved asking questions and determining how things worked.  I went to an HBCU called Tougaloo College.  At Tougaloo, my love for research science was born.   I spent my summers in research labs at NIH and Johns Hopkins.  Eventually, I continued on this path by obtaining my PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology at NYU.

In graduate school, I was a recruiter and I found that if I really wanted to make an impact on the number of African Americans or POC who chose to pursue their PhDs I needed to go to the K-12 space.  In 2008,  I was introduced to Ben Dubin-Thaler.  He had just bought a bus off of craigslist and was taking it to schools and communities to teach kids about science!   Of course, after my first day of teaching on the mobile lab I was hooked!   The students were so excited and that excitement was contagious.  It made me remember why I became a scientist in the first place.   The students and I were discovering together how cool a piece of broccoli looked and how hairy bees were when you looked up close using a microscope.  These observations led to many fruitful discussions and development of several hypotheses. 

BioBus 2013

What’s your Function?

We set out to test the hypothesis that if you give people hands-on experience in an authentic research environment, that will empower them to embrace and practice science.  This happened to work better than we expected.   Our mobile labs are a field trip that comes to you.  We park in front of schools and 6 classes come down during their normal science class to work side-by-side with scientists to do hands-on exploration using place-based science.  There was a general outcry for more!   In 2016, we partnered with the Simons Foundation to build a second mobile lab.  The mobile labs have extensively traveled locally and as far Houlton, Maine for the lunar eclipse last year.  We also saw that students wanted more and now offer after school, weekend, and summer programs as well as internships.

What’s next!

In May of 2024, the 400,000th student boarded a BioBus mobile labs. The desire for mobile lab programs increases every year.  We currently have a waiting list of hundreds of requests to bring BioBus to schools throughout NYC and beyond.  As a result, we are building two new mobile labs.  BioBus has always been focused on sustainability.  In fact, all of our mobile labs have solar panels and the original mobile lab used to run on biofuels. In the old days, we would get old french fry grease and filter it to power the bus!  We have abandoned that aspect of renewable energy (due to operational challenges), but we have embraced solar energy.  Our new buses are 100% electric and they will have solar panels on top as well.  The solar panels power the microscopes and lab inside the bus. 

Electric BioBus

The new mobile labs will double our capacity to bring science to the schools and communities who need hands-on science education.  BioBus will be open to partner with other community based organizations or museums to use the mobile lab as a platform to reach new target audiences.  We envision a future where every  student has access to hands-on science education through a BioBus mobile lab visit in New York and Boston.

Latasha Wright, Ph.D.,

is the Executive Scientific Officer of BioBus. BioBus enables Latasha to share her love of science with a new generation of scientists. Every day that Latasha spends teaching students about science in this transformative environment helps her remember that science is fun. She loves sharing the journey of discovery with students of all ages. Latasha is apart of the Leadership Team at NY STEAM Girls Collaborative.