MIT Science and Engineering Program for High School Teachers effort led by Mandana Sassanfar In June of 2004, Ronald Latanision, director of MIT's Science and Engineering Program for High School Teachers (SEPT) asked Mandana Sassafar to invite professors and postdocs from MIT's Biology department to give lectures to high school teachers from various disciplines from all across the country during the 2004 SEPT workshop. Mandana recruited several postdocs including Peter Weigele, Caroline Koeher, and Melissa Kosinski-Collins to give these presentations. The postdocs were asked to give 45 minute talks followed by a brief question and answer period about the research in which they were involved to a group of 50 high school teachers. The teachers enjoyed the presentations and remarked that they really liked meeting the actual researchers "who do real life science." Melissa, Peter and Mandana again presented to the SEPT teachers in the summer 2005 program in a session entitled "Frontier's in Life Science." Melissa's talk was entitled Protein Misfolding and Disease: From Cataracts to Alzheimer's, Peter spoke on The Secret Life of Viruses and Mandana talked on Curing Cancer. We are again participating in the SEPT program this year, and we hope to continue our involvement with the SEPT outreach program in the future. Protein Misfolding: From Cataracts to Alzheimer's Link to the MIT SEPT Homepage The Secret Life of Viruses Virus Resource Page