{"id":15984,"date":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/06\/hands-on-engineering\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:32:31","slug":"hands-on-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/06\/hands-on-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands-on engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Jaden Chizuruoke May \u201929 worked with teammates Rihanna Arouna \u201929 and Marian Akinsoji \u201929 to design the chemically powered model car whose framework he is building in this scene from the Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space, where students have a chance to work safely and independently with biological systems.<\/p>\n<p>The assignment to build the car\u2014and the layered electrochemical battery that powers it\u2014came in a class called \u201cHands-On Engineering: Squishy Style Making with Biology and Chemistry\u201d taught by the lab\u2019s director, Justin Buck, PhD \u201912. \u201cIt is definitely one of my favorite classes,\u201d says May, who appreciates that after being trained, students are given the freedom to figure out how to tackle each task in a project.<\/p>\n<p>Located in the basement of Building 26, the BioMaker Space welcomes novices and expert mentors alike, offering workshops in such things as bacterial photography, biobots, lateral flow assay, CRISPR, and DNA origami.<\/p>\n<p>For May, the makerspace has been a hub for collaboration. \u201cI could <em>never<\/em> have done anything in that lab without my peers and counselors helping me, and the emphasis placed on teamwork is what makes the class feel both welcoming and exciting,\u201d he says, adding that he made some of his first friends at MIT there: \u201cIt has been a great introduction to campus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>May says he\u2019s thinking of double majoring in Course 10-ENG (energy) and Course 21W (writing)\u2014but the class has gotten him interested in biology, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jaden Chizuruoke May \u201929 worked with teammates Rihanna Arouna \u201929  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}