A WHOLE NEW (4D!) WORLD
When recent biochemistry grad Abby Thornhill, BS ’23, was touring colleges, advice from her AP bio teacher resonated: “A smaller program means more hands-on research opportunities.” She found that at Suffolk, working with faculty who became mentors. She didn’t know it would also mean getting her hands on a Meta Quest virtual reality device and using it to manipulate the molecules she was studying.
Fumbling at first around a large room with 16 classmates in Biochemistry II, Thornhill soon became familiar with the headset and its hand-held controls. She created an avatar and learned how to pop in and out of friends’ virtual rooms to identify mystery molecules together. They “spammed” Professor Melanie Berkmen’s email with selfies taken inside Nanome, a powerful molecular design program typically used for pharmaceutical drug discovery and adapted to the undergraduate curriculum by Berkmen and her colleague Professor Celeste Peterson.
It’s often said that seeing is believing. So what happens when you add the ability to touch and move, to collaborate and create? For students in Suffolk’s VR-enhanced courses, it can mean a much deeper understanding of complex material.
Suffolk has been an early adopter when it comes to incorporating VR in the classroom experience. Resourceful faculty and students, steeped in a culture of innovation, are exploring new ways to complement traditional learning with VR. Suffolk’s small class sizes are ideal for access, training, and experimentation.
Increasingly, Suffolk students don VR headsets and use software to translate concepts from books and whiteboards into 4D space. Aspiring interior designers guide clients, step by step, through the adaptation of existing buildings, revealing how future occupants might interact with one another. High school students on campus to study Boston’s history build their own virtual exhibition spaces to guide visitors through unfamiliar narratives about the city. And biochemists researching the smallest building blocks of life can expand them to the size of a classroom and even step inside the molecules for an otherwise unattainable view.