The Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) mesmerized a group of elementary and middle school students recently during a McLane classroom visit and IFCB demo. GM Jon Mogul brought the IFCB to the Bay Farm Montessori Academy in MA where he spoke with students and helped them experience first-hand how the smart underwater microscope captures phytoplankton images from water. The students were mesmerized by McLane’s ‘robot’ in action.
The IFCB is an in-situ automated submersible imaging flow cytometer that generates images of particles in-flow taken from the aquatic environment. For more information, see the IFCB page in our website. From this page, you can access the MVCO IFCB Dashboard, a live time-series stream of millions of images from an IFCB deployed in-situ at the Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory from 2006 to present. New images are uploaded to the cloud-based platform every two hours. Other IFCB Dashboards available to view contain mission images ranging from a shipboard application on a NASA cruise in the Arctic to a deployment at HAB sensitive Salt Pond on Cape Cod.
In other outreach events, McLane COO spoke to Falmouth Academy’s Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) group and was an alumna resource for their Career Day. McLane will also be exhibiting at the WaterWORKS: Blue Economy Career Day at Cape Cod Community College so students can envision a career in ocean sciences and engineering.
McLane is committed to our local Cape Cod community and works to be a STEM resource. If you have an educational project in which McLane may help, please let us know. We’re eager to host students and teachers at our facilities, (please contact us for more information).
