# Tomorrow's Science Today: Preparing for the Next Pandemic

> **NIH NIH R25** · 3D MOLECULAR DESIGNS · 2022 · $235,187

## Abstract

Project Summary
This project – Tomorrow’s Science Today: preparing for the next pandemic – will create a professional
development experience for high school science teachers focused on infectious diseases and the
molecular technologies that are being used to control them. The project consists of two distinct phases.
In the first, we will create a variety of hands-on instructional materials – composed of both foam-based
schematic models and accurate 3D-printed models of proteins – to bring to life molecular stories of the
process of science. We will use a framework that emphasizes how the foundational concepts of
molecular biology established in the past (Yesterday’s Science) provides the basis for the amazing
technology that has been brought to bear on the current SARS-Cov-2 pandemic (Today’s Science) and
also lays the ground-work for even more powerful defenses in the future (Tomorrow’s Science).
In the second phase of this project, we will create a professional learning experience in which the
project’s instructional materials will be introduced to high school science teachers. The project’s goals
are (i) to increase the teachers’ content knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms of infectious
diseases and (ii) to model for the teachers a student-centered active learning pedagogy that values
questions over answers. The project features a formal teacher empowerment program in which a small
group of veteran teachers are trained to serve as mentors for teachers who are new to the project.
High school biology and chemistry teachers will be recruited into this project via presentations and
exhibits at state, regional and national meetings of science educators. A plan is in place to proactively
accept teachers from schools with a significant population of underserved minority students. And
finally, the broad dissemination of the project’s instructional materials will be achieved through our
established partnerships with other science outreach organizations whose programs focus on URM
students in urban Milwaukee, Chicago and rural Nebraska and South Dakota.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10746578
- **Project number:** 7R25GM146236-02
- **Recipient organization:** 3D MOLECULAR DESIGNS
- **Principal Investigator:** Tim M. Herman
- **Activity code:** R25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $235,187
- **Award type:** 7
- **Project period:** 2022-08-11 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10746578

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10746578, Tomorrow's Science Today: Preparing for the Next Pandemic (7R25GM146236-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10746578. Licensed CC0.

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