How can data management tools help us discover new treatments for a chronic disease?

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom or shared with students online.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Linda Brown, an epidemiologist, and Dr Megan Carnes, a genomics research scientist, from RTI International in the US who have developed a suite of data management tools to help myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) researchers to collaborate in the hope of finding new treatments.
• This resource also contains interviews with Linda, Megan and some of their colleagues. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The team will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research, and tasks them to act on Linda and Megan’s careers tips.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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