Maggie Steiner, PhD’25, vividly recounts the first time she saw UC COMBO, a trainee-led organization at the University of Chicago, come to life.
“We were in a room with 70 middle schoolers,” she said, recalling the inaugural workshop the group held about three years ago at Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy on Chicago’s West Side. “The programming ran smoothly, our volunteers were amazing, and I remember just standing there thinking—this is what we’ve been working toward.”
That workshop, part of a renewed initiative to bring computational biology into middle and high school classrooms, marked the successful relaunch and rebranding of UC COMBO (short for Computational Biology Outreach) after the pandemic forced an earlier version of the group to pause operations.
Steiner, along with Jennifer Blanc, PhD’24, and Suzanna Parkinson, a PhD candidate at UChicago, led the organization’s revival. The trio were motivated by a shared belief that exposing students to real scientists and accessible coding experiences could demystify computational biology – which uses computers, math, and statistics to analyze and interpret large amounts of biological data – and open doors to future STEM careers.
“We saw that there was a gap in engaging with local students around coding and computational science,” said Blanc, now a preceptor at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. “We wanted to give them a way to explore those subjects that felt exciting and attainable.”
From proteins to programming
UC COMBO’s interactive workshops, which can be single or multi-day events, blend short lectures with hands-on coding exercises and authentic conversations about careers in science. The sessions introduce foundational programming concepts through real-world biology problems, like decoding DNA or exploring genetic risk for disease.
In middle school classrooms, students might translate a short DNA sequence into amino acids and then build a beaded bracelet where each color represents part of a protein. The same activity is later mirrored in beginner-friendly exercise with the Python coding language, showing how computers can scale up these analyses. High school sessions go deeper—students simulate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) by analyzing mock genetic data, first by hand and then using code.
“The idea is to show how much quicker we can do this using computers,” said Steiner.
The workshops also help make science careers feel more accessible by putting actual scientists in front of students.
“Students can see that we’re not mean or boring and that we don’t all look the same or have taken the same path,” Blanc said. “We try to show that anyone can be a scientist even if you’re not what you had imagined a scientist to be.”
Sometimes, that spark of curiosity is immediate. Blanc recalled one student who, after a lesson on genetic inheritance, asked: “If you inherit mutations from your parents, how did the first mutation happen?” To her, that moment showed the workshops were doing more than teaching, they were helping students think like scientists.
Expanding their reach
The group, now a registered student organization, has a regular roster of about 25 volunteers as well as a five- to seven-person leadership team.
In addition to workshops, the organization has participated in local science fairs, including the South Side Science Festival, and National DNA Day activities. The group has also run summer workshops for high school and first-year college students through the UChicago Comprehensive Cancer Center’s educational programs.
While both Steiner and Blanc have stepped down from their UC COMBO leadership roles, they remain passionate about the mission of the organization and thankful for the impact it had on their own graduate school experience.
