This article appeared in the Trenton Times on Saturday, August 2nd, 2003.

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Seeing Images of Success

Saturday, August 02, 2003
By JON VUOCOLO

PRINCETON BOROUGH - Sixteen students from Trenton high schools have the opportunity this week to work with one of the most advanced microscopes ever built.

It's part of a three-week program made possible through Upward Bound, a group that prepares economically disadvantaged Trenton students for college and teaches them about career opportunities. With the guidance of experts from the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM), the students are learning firsthand about cancer cells and familiarizing themselves with equipment that's not available in their own schools.

The program is for traditionally underrepresented youth, said Shannon Swilley, an assistant in the program. She added, however, that it would be impossible to find an atomic-force microscope in virtually any high school in the country.

Atomic-force microscopes are very effective in determining whether or not a cell is cancerous since they magnify images to the atomic level, said Dan Steinberg, director of Outreach and Education for the PCCM program. He said the microscopes are a 10-year-old technology and the university has a "cutting-edge" version.

"You can really see the atomic structure of what you're looking at," Steinberg said of the microscopes. Steinberg said the students would be especially interested in the program since most high school experiments use established, old data. The cancer research they're studying in these three weeks is current. He added that by using this same technology, doctors will be able to detect cancer cells before they become a health hazard 10 to 20 years from now.

"Science is something that everyone can do," Steinberg said. "It's not abstract or distant from them. It's something that they can enjoy doing."

"The main theme is to get students excited about science," said Wole Soboyejo, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and a professor in the PCCM program.
Graduate assistant Chris Milburn described how the students are looking at cancer cells on different surfaces, including titanium, silicon and gold, each of which has different levels of "biocompatibility."

Working in conjunction with Steinberg is Pete Gange, a Middlesex High School teacher who helps set the pace for the lessons. His work is necessary since Princeton scientists are not accustomed to working with high school students, and vice versa.

In addition to the atomic force microscope, the students use scanning electron microscopes and high-resolution optical microscopes, which are much-improved versions of the microscopes often used in high school labs.

"We have worked with the Upward Bound program for a couple of years, and the students have really grown in their knowledge of science," said Chris Ritter, program administrator of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. "Students were inspired and very eager to learn math and science. Here at Princeton, we're working to include more students in math, science and technology."

And their work apparently is making an impact.

"It's a really good program - we don't have the opportunity to learn like this in high school," said Quamo Onibanjo, a senior who will be attending Trenton Central High School next year. His ambition is to attend The College of New Jersey and eventually be a biomedical engineer.