“Food, Agriculture and U” Camp

“Food, Agriculture and U” Summer Camp

During the week of June 24-28, 2024, fifteen middle school students participated in the inaugural “Food, Agriculture, and U” summer camp at the University of Minnesota. At this camp, the participants got to see how their food is grown and learn about the science behind it. The camp was extremely successful and plans are in place to continue it next year. It was organized by the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI), GEMS Informatics, the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS), and the University of Minnesota Genomics Center.

The campers spent Day 3 of the camp learning about computational methods for analyzing agricultural data. In the previous two days of the camp they had inspected a “mysterious brown food substance,” extracted its DNA and sequenced that DNA. At MSI, they got to match that sequenced DNA against a vast database of millions of sequences to determine the identity of the plant that gave rise to the substance. Then they zeroed in on the precise type of food it was using the nutrition profile from the databases at Food Data Central. Finally, they got to see MSI’s supercomputers and learn more about how a datacenter operates. Dr. Christy Henzler, Co-Director of Research Informatics at MSI, led the tours.

A story and pictures from the camp appear on the GEMS Informatics website: Fun for everyone at interdisciplinary Food, Agriculture, and U summer science camp.

The idea for this camp originated with Dr. Kevin Silverstein, Scientific Lead and Informatics Analyst in MSI’s Bioinformatics Group and GEMS Informatics Operations Manager, George Annor, associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition in CFANS, and Getiria Onsongo, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at Macalester College and Agroinformatics Research and Database Analyst at GEMS. Over 25 staff members in CFANS, Research Computing, and the U of M Genomics Center helped organize the camp and work with the campers. Generous corporate sponsors PepsiCo, Cargill, and Fairbault Foods provided contributions that allowed six students to attend the camp cost-free and provided snacks for all the campers.

Support for the camp came from several University of Minnesota units: 

Comms:

Day 1: 

Day 2: 

Day 3: 

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Day 5: 

 

Image description: Dr. Christy Henzler, Co-Director of Research Informatics at MSI, leads a tour of MSI’s datacenter.

Woman gestures as she leads a group of students through double row of supercomputers

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