TIP/High school students get hands-on with CSI science

Students from five Madison high schools are getting a first-hand view of cutting-edge forensic science and its high-tech tools this week on the campus of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Working shoulder-to-shoulder with University of Wisconsin–Madison chemists and Thermo Fisher engineers, the teenagers will analyze samples taken from a “crime scene” — clothing threads, ink, plastic scraps and residue from drinking glasses — using methods they know from popular crime dramas they watch on TV.

Now in its second year, the Technology and Science workshop — called “TESCI” — was created by UW–Madison chemistry professor Josh Coon with a grant from the National Science Foundation and support from Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Students will be using Thermo Fisher Scientific spectrometers and microscopes — instruments essential to crime labs but often too costly or complicated for high school labs — along with their own science and logic skills to solve a “crime” set up by their scientist teachers.

On Wednesday, June 23, from 1 to 3 p.m. the program will be open to media and camera-friendly. About two-dozen students — from DeForest Area, Edgerton, Evansville, Madison West and Stoughton high schools — will be available to answer questions about their work while they analyze samples on Thermo Fisher equipment.

Coon organized the summer workshops as a way to get students in high school science classes and technology education classes to work together and understand the role of technology in science and vice-versa. The summer participants will teach fellow students and teachers what they learned during the fall on equipment loaned to the schools.

Coon, Thermo engineers and high school teachers will also be available for interviews.

The workshop is underway through Friday at Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Madison offices, 5225 Verona Road in Fitchburg.

If you would like to attend the media availability with the TESCI students, please contact Chris Barncard of UW–Madison’s University Communications office at (608) 890-0465, or by e-mail at barncard@wisc.edu.