Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,
I am in the eighth grade, and I was assigned to do a science fair project. I am very good at science in my class and would like to do a relatively complicated project that will get me to place in my school. I would like to do my project on biomedical engineering, but I cannot find good projects to do within Science Buddies. I would like the project to be done under $150, and I would prefer if the project dealt with kidneys. It should be done in about two to three weeks at most for the actual experimentation part. Can anybody help me with formulating a scientific question?

Hi mrigho,

Thanks so much for your post! Would you mind giving us a little more information on what you want your project to entail? A biomedical engineering project relevant to kidneys is very broad, and it would help us brainstorm more on what you can do if you can tell us what is it about the kidneys that you want to study.

All the best!

Hi,

Just to add onto Maleencabe’s advice, ScienceBuddies has a great search tool for finding projects. I found one titled “Creating a Kidney: How Stem Cells Might Be Used to Bioengineer a Vital Organ” that fits your criteria for time, difficulty, and cost. It investigates the optimal protein environment for bioengineering a kidney using a bioinformatics database. Bioprinting may be an interesting area you could look into for your project, as the 3D printing of tissues is promising for making organs. Furthermore, you could investigate how regulatory signals and physical cues determine cell phenotype and tissue function, as this will affect how a bioengineered kidney would be accepted by the human body. Another topic in kidney bioengineering is decellularization, which builds three dimensional structures by removing cellular material. You may want to research further into some of these subjects to help you narrow down your project idea.

Hope this helps!
~Catherine M.