1. University of Washington
BEACON Education &
Outreach Initiatives
Billie J. Swalla
University of Washington

2. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
• Research highlights
- Evolution of 3D printed flowers
under hawkmoth foraging
- Genes underlying aggregation in
natural and evolved yeast isolates
- Timing of gene expression affects
evolution of ascidian development
- Evolution of an engineered genetic
circuit with a suicidal public good
• Education/outreach highlights
- Citizen science via Seattle Aquarium
monitoring evolution in Puget Sound
- Field/comp courses at Friday Harbor
- Undergrad research in UW labs on
experimental evolution
- Outreach: K-12 classroom visits,
science fair judging, town hall talk
• A few statistics from this past year
- 7 publications, 8 grants/fellowships,
17 presentations, 2 faculty jobs
- 39 trainees: 51% female & 23% URM
Autolysis Growth
A
Altruist Consumer
Cellulose
Cellobiose

3. One of the goals of the Seattle Aquarium Citizen Science (CS) / BEACON partnership was to
provide summer STEM internships for high-school students motivated and inspired by their
previous participation in aquarium outreach programs. Three BEACON graduates conceived
the intern projects and mentored two interns each. The interns are presenting their results
in a symposium at the end of August.
The interns size-fractionated plankton communities
by filtering water samples through meshes and
membrane filters with successive pore sizes.
Robert excises a filter membrane. Metagenomic
DNA was extracted from the membrane.
Etilet’s project involved measuring physiological
and transcriptomic responses to environmental
stressors in the Pacific Oyster.
Interns used 18S rRNA sequences to reconstruct the
genetic diversity of plankton communities. At one oyster
farm, they deteced the presence of the dinoflagellate
responsible for paralytic shellfish poisioning!

4. Interns conduct biodiversity surveys
on a beach near Hood Canal. They
used their data to calculate and
compare biodiversity indices at
beach sites around Puget Sound.
The interns used settlement plates to
study ecological succession of larval
communities.
Citizen science and open science go hand in hand.
Notebooks from the intern projects are online at
http://citizenscienceresearch.wikispaces.com/home

5. Louise Mead (BEACON) and teacher Michael Kenney
(Lake Quinalt HS) question the adaptive advantages
of orange versus purple varieties of Pisaster
(seastar) on 2nd Beach, La Push, WA.
Teachers practice making phylogenetic trees from
pipe cleaners in “the Great Clade Race”
The CS / BEACON partnership also enabled a teacher workshop (Aug 5th-9th)
impacting Puget Sound regional, as well as rural and tribal communities in
coastal Washington. Guest speakers included professional scientists and
academics who drew connections between the effects of climate change and
evolution in action.
Teachers were introduced to many curricular resources that will help them
present the evidence for both controversial topics in their classrooms. They
were also taught to relate observations in the field to evolutionary science. The
impacts are expected to disseminate through classroom education as well as
through the Aquarium’s Citizen Science beach monitoring programs.

6. BEACON graduate mentor Lauren
Vandepas examining Bubble Snail
eggs with intern Maddy.
Interns Maddy and Maighread at their
microscopes.

7. Undergraduate
Initiatives
Billie J. Swalla
University of Washington
Providing undergraduate students
with the thrill of discovery…

8. COLLABORATION
& INNOVATION
Evolution in Action
• Modules to be developed and exchanged from existing courses
and undergraduate research in experimental evolution.
Ben Kerr – NSF Career Grant
UW - Experimental Evolutionary Ecology - designing a new module each
summer and putting them up on the BEACON UW site.

9. COLLABORATION
& INNOVATION
Evolution in Action
• UW BERG (Biology Education Research Group)
• 2011 Presentation by Charles Ofria on Avida Ed
• 2012 Presentation by Louise Mead

10. Over 100 years of Excellence in Marine Biology
Located in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island (80 miles N of Seattle)
U.W. College of the Environment

11. Friday Harbor Labs - San Juan Island
Beautiful setting, amazing biological diversity, all students doing research in the course, few
distractions for them.

12. New Computer Lab for teaching Computational Methods
Bioinformatics/Modelling/Phylogenetics/Genomics

13. Undergraduate Research
Apprenticeship
Genome Biology
• Undergraduate students engaged in field activities
• Enhance computational skills
• Clone genes and examine gene expression to study evolution of nerve
networks with marine invertebrates as a collaborative research experience.
• Instructors and/or themes vary from year to year
• FHL has housing, dining facilities & a computer classroom
• Students are recruited from UW and other universities

14. Swalla
Undergraduates
& FHL Apprentices
2008 Hee Sun Kim (2005-2006) Dental Student at Temple University
2008 Brock Roberts (2002-2004) Graduate Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology
Department at the University of California at Berkeley.
2011 M.D. Dr. Lauren May (FHL 2005) Thomas Jefferson U. Medical College, Philadelphia, PA
2011 M.D./Ph.D. Dr. Helen Chea(2003-2005) Mount Sinai School of Medicine; NY, NY
2011 M.D. Dr. Monique Mayo (FHL 2001) University of Washington Medical School
2011 Peter Conlin (FHL 2010) BEACON Biology Department, University of Washington
2012 KellenAndrilenas(2008-2010) Graduate Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology
Department at Boston University.
2012 Shawn Luttrell (FHL 2010) BEACON Biology Department, University of Washington
2013 Rebecca Bruders(FHL 2012) Graduate Student in Biology Department, U. of Utah
2013 Zander Fodor (FHL 2012) BEACON Biology Department, University of Washington
2013 Joshua Swore (FHL 2012) BEACON Biology Department, University of Washington
2013 Ph.D. Tom White (FHL 2005) UW Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program

15. Acknowledgements
• Professors:
Dr. Andrea Kohn,Dr. LenoidMoroz, Dr. Billie
Swalla
• Amazing TAs: Gabrielle Winters, Caleb
Bostwick, Emily Dabe, and Kevin Kocot.
• The Best Bioinformaticians: Mat Citarella
and David Girardo.
• Funding: FHL, NIH, and NSF.