BioBus

This grant supported BioBus’ large-scale public event on neuroscience, art, and society on 125^th Street in Harlem during Brain Awareness Week 2023. The event engaged community members in discussions and activities with an artist and neuroscientists on the neuroscience and social structures underlying perception, confidence, bias, attraction, identity, and beauty.

Dana Foundation support has made BioBus a staple of New York City’s annual Brain Awareness Week celebration, allowing their staff scientists and volunteers from local universities to bring neuroscience out of the lab and into the community. BioBus’ high-tech mobile and community laboratories provide students and the community at large with intimate access to scientists and research experiences in low-pressure, high-engagement settings. BioBus partners with the Greater NYC Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience each year, recruiting scientists from Columbia University, New York University, Mount Sinai, and Rockefeller University to participate.

The event provided a unique opportunity for the Harlem community to explore intersections between neuroscience and art and learn how the field relates to their own experiences and larger, societal issues.

This grant supported the Dana Education objective to support sustained informal education that aims to strengthen knowledge of neuroscience and its connections to society and empower people of all ages to use that knowledge in their every day lives.