Dr. Pereira and STEM Center for Mathematics and Science Education (CMASE, UAF) organized a virtual outreach activity for 8th -12th grade students on May 19th and 20th, 2021. This event was conducted remotely as an e-Workshop.
Multiple technical methods and scientific principles were introduced to study genetic variation in various rice accession lines from around the world and a collection of mutants of the plant genetics model Arabidopsis.
The workshop also conducted hands-on training using bioinformatics tools, e.g., to search for homologous sequences in databases for various DNA sequences of the rice genome, multiple sequence alignments, and phylogenetic tree construction using genetic variants.
Dr. Andy Pereira (UAF) 
Dr. Anuj Kumar (UAF) 
Charles Ruiz (UAF) 
Dr. Julie Thomas (UAF) 
Navdeep Gill (UAF) 
Raul Guerra (LSU)
Zoom screen shots of the various presentations from University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) and Louisiana State University.
Photo Credits: Shawn Bell (UA STEM Center Director)