Open Education and the Future of Science Education

Rhiju Das

Dr. Rhiju Das strives to predict how sequence codes for structure in proteins, nucleic acids, and heteropolymers whose folds have yet to be explored. The Das group uses new computational and experimental tools to tackle the de novo modeling of protein and RNA folds, the high-throughput structure mapping of riboswitches and random RNAs, and the design of self-knotting and self-crystallizing nucleic acids.

Alex Peake

Alex Peake is the founder and CEO of Primer Labs, a start-up that creates endless learning games to make all knowledge playable. Alex founded the alternative fashion company Tactical Corsets in 2009. Alex was the editor of Agile Journal, a web & mobile applications developer at Sling, and lead animation editor at Atomic Cartoons.

From a young age, Alex believed that games were going to change the world and he set out to gather the pieces to make it happen. His 3rd grade Open Alternative School allowed students to learn at their own pace, so he and his peers made a competitive game out of completing grade levels as fast as they could. In 4th grade, he designed his first RPG called Realms and taught himself C and HyperCard to computerize it. In middle school he divided his time between all-laptop Computer Immersion and mentoring with Professor Dave Fracchia in the Graphics Lab at Simon Fraser University.

He created an online empire simulation game called Mage Princes using play-by-email turn files to bypass FirstClass BBS systems' lack of game support. Hundreds of players signed up to pay for the sequel which he planned to include more sophisticated military, economic and tradecraft RPG elements to allow players to cooperatively build nations.

Ingmar Riedel-Kruse

The Reidal-Kruse lab is developing biotic games suited for educational purposes in schools and in public settings like museums. The educational aspects and evaluations are done in collaboration with the group of Prof.Daniel Schwartz (Stanford).

We are also developing biotic online games to crowd-source the scientific method, allowing interested non-scientists to make valuable contributions to bio-medically relevant problems while having fun. We hope that this will also lead to a new form of 'citizen science'.