We are immensely grateful to our generous collaborator, Dr Mamta Jain, who shares her perspectives and understandings on the coronavirus pandemic with school-age children and their educators. Dr. Jain serves as an Infectious Disease Physician and is working on the front line during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Through this video blog, she shares how math and science are useful for epidemiologists to understand more about the coronavirus, and how to prevent the spread.
The 4 minute video describes how math can help develop information like rates and measure exponential growth. We can use math to estimate how many people are infected when one person tests positive. The video also defines who epidemiologists are, what is a virus, and what are vaccines.
Another fascinating contribution by Dr Jain and her colleagues is the walkSTEM@Work tour of Parkland Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. walkSTEM@Work is a new category of talkSTEM videos in the talkSTEM YouTube channel. We feature short videos that take K-12 students through different work sites and careers, using our walkSTEM framework of stops and inquiry questions. This framework allows students to process the information shared by our amazing network of contributors quickly. We hope this new collection of videos will help our youth continue to expand their STEM mindsets and to see the breadth of STEM in the real world. We invite all interested contributors to email us at info@talkSTEM.org if you would like to learn more about contributing to this video collection. Both photos and videos clips can be utilized to create walkSTEM@Work videos.
Our deepest gratitude to Dr. Jain and her colleagues for volunteering their time to create these videos so that our youth can gain insight into the work they do. Thank you for all you do for us!
The above short video gives insight as to how hospitals use some routines to keep their patients and staff safe. We hope that all educators will watch this video with their students and children and discuss. In the video, we can see different methods in place for navigating the space and assessing patient’s health. There are some examples of intuitive wayfinding, a process of design that gives visual cues to help people navigate a space subconsciously. As always, we try to connect the content to students’ lived experiences and encourage teachers and other educators to do the same. Could we relate the hospital’s routines with our bedtime routines? What about workout routines? Or how we wash our hands? The processes in the hospital are just like any routine you do everyday. There are always ways to optimize or increase the efficiency of your routine. We can introduce ideas like computational thinking when discussing the function of routines.
About Dr. Jain
Mamta K. Jain, MD, MPH, FIDSA is a Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Jain has focused her career in Infectious Diseases and conducts clinical trials to evaluate new therapies for HIV, hepatitis C, influenza, and now COVID-19. Dr. Jain research focuses on improving clinical outcomes in those with HIV and viral hepatitis.
During this global pandemic, Dr. Jain has been at the forefront of conducting clinical trials for patients with COVID-19 in order to find effective therapies. Her trials have brought access to novel therapies for over 100 patients at UT Southwestern and Parkland Hospital. Dr. Jain is a Fellow of Infectious Disease Society of America and is a member of Standard Practice and Guideline Committee for IDSA. She is a member of the IDSA Guidelines Committee for Infection Prevention for COVID-19.
You can read more about Dr. Jain’s current research at these two sources:
Dallas Morning News
Center Times
Dr. Jain enjoys jogging, cooking, and traveling. She enjoys spending time with her husband and two boys (one who will be a freshman in high school and another who will be a freshman in college).
Dr. Koshi Dhingra has dedicated her career to STEM education and is passionate about having every child live up to their potential. Seeing a lack of girls and other underrepresented youth in STEM programs, she founded talkSTEM in 2015 to address the imbalance. She has a doctorate in science education from Teachers College, Columbia University, has years of experience teaching in graduate and undergraduate programs, and has held leadership roles in universities. She advises and collaborates with a broad range of educational institutions globally. Dr. Dhingra began her career teaching science in middle and high school in New York. She lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs.
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