Columbia youth discover new science paths

April 1, 2025

Teacher, firefighter, pop star, doctor, YouTuber — children can only aspire to be what they’ve been exposed to. 

But what about the lesser-known career paths, like audio engineer, plant scientist or cancer researcher? Even as adults we sometimes learn about a friend’s job and think “Wow, I wish I would’ve known that job existed when I was a kid.” 

Each year in the spring, the Columbia Young Scientists Fair & Expo opens elementary-aged students’ eyes to a wide-variety of scientific fields with hands-on activities led by Mizzou faculty and graduate students. 

For this year’s event, more than 100 members of the Mizzou research community set up booths on two floors of Memorial Union and about 400 children and their families made their way around the perimeter of each room to see the demonstrations and activities.  

Christina Gilbert brought her sons Milo, 10, and Shepherd, 3, to the fair for an afternoon of science fun. 

“This fair is great because the kids have access to all the different research departments at MU. The bigger kids can learn about different career paths and have different entry points to engage in science.” Gilbert said. “I love that they’re showing kids that science doesn’t have to be boring worksheets in a classroom. They have activities for all different age groups and it’s in a contained location, so we can divide and conquer and both my boys can be engaged.”

But more than just a service to the community, this event is beneficial for the researchers who participate, too. Many National Science Foundation grants require that investigators include a Broader Impacts plan that lays out how this research will benefit society and an actual plan for implementing that benefit. Examples of Broader Impacts plans include engaging with the public about their research topic or developing curriculum for the topic to be taught to students. 

Christopher O'Bryan, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has participated in the expo for the past three years, and has refined his group's exhibit a little each time. This year, he and his team used waterbeads to demonstrate how packings of highly swollen polymer particles can behave like both a liquid and a solid. 

"The expo has been a great opportunity to test out and refine our outreach activities and find new ways to present and share our research to the people of Columbia," O'Bryan said. "We are hoping to continue to grow our exhibit each year with more examples from our research lab and I am hoping to use this as a foundation for the Broader Impacts section of my NSF CAREER proposal."

But even if a researcher isn't working on an NSF grant that requires a broader impacts section, sharing their work in a way that kids can understand is a valuable skill to build and makes for a fun and rewarding afternoon.

"Outreach events like this are a great opportunity to introduce people to our fields and show the importance of having scientists with vastly different backgrounds working together to solve problems." O'Bryan said. "I find it incredibly rewarding when the kids connect these dots and start asking their own questions to learn more."

The Connector works hard to do most of the set up and logistics so that the barrier to entry for researchers is relatively low, too. 

"Christal Huber and The Connector team had already done all the heavy lifting, and we just get to show up and share our research," O'Bryan said. 

View more photos from the day of science fun: