IE School of Science and Technology Adds Environmental Solutions Lab
New labs focus on environmental DNA and microbiology, biogeochemistry, and geobiology.
IE School of Science and Technology completed the construction of three new Environmental Solutions labs at the Segovia campus to enhance creativity and innovation for the new Bachelor in Environmental Sciences for Sustainability (BESS).
The three new labs - Environmental DNA and Microbiology, Biogeochemistry, as well as Geobiology– will enable professors and students of the BESS to work on academic and research projects using state-of-art facilities.
Juan Carlos Silva, Academic Director for the degree explained how the labs will facilitate the project-based pedagogical approach needed to address real environmental challenges.
“We have the students try to solve a challenge,” he said. “We propose a challenge, and depending on the challenge they can go to the field and collect data and samples, then analyze them at the labs.”
The Sci-Tech School constructed the labs also to help advance professors’ research in the future.
“In the future, the labs are going to be able to host more specialized machines and instruments that are going to be integrated into our university professors’ research,” Silva said. “The labs have been designed in a special way that can easily integrate those machines.”
Silva talked about the Nature-based Solutions for Environmental Cleanup project currently underway at the lab, aimed at investigating ways that plants and animals could clean the environment instead of using technology.
“By being trained and having hands-on experience, students are going to be able to spring their imagination and creativity, and that way they are going to be contributing to the environmental solutions.”