MIRCORE

• Booth: 1139

We engage in biomedical research and education aiming to connect scientists and the public. We have been teaching high schoolers since 2011, training them to perform their own research and encouraging them to raise funds to provide microgrants to scientists. Our high school volunteers often stay in our program after graduation, building a community of science advocates while organically expanding our programs. Based on our experience and growing number of active alumni, we piloted a Citizen-Scientist Sequencing Initiative in February 2023 where participants were sole custodians of their genomic data. Our pilot program indicates that with careful ethical and STEM-principled education, inquisitive people with a high school education can analyze their whole exome sequencing raw data and grasp its significance responsibly without us (miRcore) looking at their data. Furthermore, some were willing to share specific variants anonymously for collective research; analyzing such shared data, we found novel, previously unidentified variants to be common among our participants. Based on subset of 30 participants, this result complements the standard practice of subjecting massive data to in-depth computational analysis drawing on a spectrum of statistical methods. Here, a small group of individuals pooled their data to achieve group-sourced results. We seek partners with whom to carefully scale up our initiative. Come learn about our undertaking and how you might help or benefit from it.

Brands: Your genome, in your hands. Vision: democratizing medical research. Goal: to build a gene-literate citizenry owning its genomic data and trusting science. Values: science, compassion, collaboration