Perry Research Scholars Institute brings talented high schoolers to the UI

Iowa Now - Research

Squeals of delight echo through the University of Iowa’s MacLean Hall, followed by the excited voices of young people testing the latest in virtual reality technology—in this case, a virtual bike ride through a virtual neighborhood with virtual moving cars.“Watch out for that car!”

“Oh my gosh! There’s another one coming.”

Inside the Hank Virtual Environments Lab, teenagers cluster near a stationary bicycle surrounded by video screens. As the teens take turns riding the bike, they listen to UI research assistant Pooya Rahimian explain how he uses behavioral and computer science techniques to study perception-action problems.

“This is so cool,” says Amy Liao, a 14-year-old from Iowa City, just seconds after jumping on the stationary bike for her turn.

Liao is one of 18 teens taking part in the first Perry Research Scholars Institute (PRSI), a two-week summer camp program for eighth-, ninth-, and 10th-graders organized by the College of Education’s Belin-Blank Center.

The camp runs through July 21 on the UI campus. Its purpose is to introduce teens to a variety of academic research—from work at UI Hospitals and Clinics to anthropological digs in a field near the Coralville Reservoir—and to provide quiet time to contemplate future career choices.

It also serves as a bridge between two existing and very popular summer academic programs offered by the UI’s Belin-Blank Center: the Blank Summer Institute for the Arts & Sciences for seventh- and eighth-graders from Iowa and the Secondary Student Training Program, for 10th- and 11th-graders from around the world.

“With this new program, our goal is to expand students’ conceptions of what it means to do research,” says Lori Ihrig, supervisor of curriculum and instruction at the Belin-Blank Center. “By working with partners across the UI campus, we can show students the variety of ways knowledge is created at a research-intensive institution.”

During lab ...

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