Small fish, big impact: How a teacher with zebrafish is inspiring students to do science
For nearly 25 years, Jamie Shuda, EdD, has led Project BioEYES, the free life science education program she co-founded for under-resourced schools, while helping to expand Penn Medicine’s broader portfolio of STEM community outreach initiatives.
Jamie Shuda, EdD, had a car full of fish and a dream. It was 2002 when Shuda, then a Philadelphia public school third-grade teacher, drove to school for the first time with borrowed tanks of zebrafish and a few pieces of lab equipment. She wanted to improve her students’ science lessons—to have them participate in experiments rather than listen to a lecture. That dream was about to come true.
The third graders excitedly gathered around a microscope, taking turns to see the zebrafish larvae—tiny, newly hatched fish—in petri dishes. The kids observed how quickly the fish moved around in the containers. They peeked through their transparent scales to see organs taking shape, and hypothesized why they developed this way. “Don’t be afraid to mess up,” Shuda told her students. “This is a time to just think; try something new.”
In her students’ words, as Shuda recalled, it was “super fun and cool.”
That first show-and-tell activity not only gave Shuda’s class a glimpse into what a scientist’s lab could look like. It eventually became Project BioEYES, a free STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education program for under-resourced schools that gives students hands-on opportunities to explore life science in thousands of other classrooms.
Today, Shuda is director of the office of outreach, education, and research at Penn Medicine, where she has helped expand not only BioEYES—from a local to worldwide initiative—but also Penn Medicine’s portfolio of other STEM community outreach programs to inspire new generations of scientists.
A teacher on a mission
“Every kid deserves the chance to say, ‘I can do science,’” Shuda said.
That’s the mission of BioEYES, a five-day program in which an outreach educator brings zebrafish—commonly used for research due to their genetic similarities to humans—to teach students, or “junior scientists,” lessons in biology and genetics tailored to different grade levels.
The idea originated from Shuda’s experience as a teacher.
Schools in the city lacked funding for basic lab equipment. Science followed school districts’ curriculums, which were largely taught with lectures and textbooks that reinforced science as a set of facts to memorize, not a process to discover. The images and lessons didn’t necessarily help the students picture themselves doing science.
“I wanted to change that perspective,” she said, to show her students, who may not have seen real-life scientist role models from their own community, that they could be scientists too, and they could do so in their own classroom.
But she needed backup. Shuda had a master’s degree in education but had only taken a few science classes. Although it wasn’t her expertise, she knew the science lessons could be better.
A school of fish for a school of students
Shuda got connected with Thomas Jefferson University biologist Steven Farber, PhD, whose lab was like an aquarium of zebrafish.
Farber shared Shuda’s passion for improving science education in local schools, but the idea of teaching a classroom full of kids was overwhelming to him. That’s why Shuda borrowed fish and equipment from Farber’s lab to bring to her own students for that first test run in 2002, proving that a classroom-based program could work. Her students loved the activity.
With Farber’s lab equipment and science background, and Shuda’s teaching and classroom management skills, the two developed a lesson plan revolved around the zebrafish that was tailored for elementary school students. It was the first iteration of BioEYES—named after Shuda’s mission for kids to see themselves as scientists and “see science through their own eyes.”
“Nothing keeps you more honest than trying to teach kids science and them looking at you like, ‘What did you just say?’” Shuda said. “We’re creating a scientifically literate community, but we have to first communicate it in a way that’s digestible.”
Shuda was soon hired by Farber’s lab to work on BioEYES full-time, even while she continued her regular teaching job. She took this work on the road for seven years, driving around Philadelphia to her teacher friends’ and siblings’ classrooms—as the oldest of six, a few of Shuda’s siblings were still in school—to test out the lessons, which grew to be curated by grade level. Elementary school classes focus on basic anatomy and habitats of zebrafish compared to humans, while high school classes learn about zebrafish embryos and determine how their genetic coding translates into physical traits.
Along the way, Shuda and Farber evaluated the program’s outcomes and presented their findings at national conferences—improved science knowledge among students and more positive attitudes toward science.
Connecting Penn science to Philadelphia students
In 2009, Shuda was recruited to bring BioEYES to Penn Medicine. (Farber eventually brought it to Johns Hopkins University. Philadelphia and Baltimore now both serve as central hubs of the program.)
Shuda incorporated BioEYES as an outreach program for the Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IRM), a research hub that brings together scientists across Penn to study how cells and tissues form, heal, and regenerate. The institute, which had been established just two years earlier, sought to add a community outreach component to connect its discovery mission with local public needs. The BioEYES curriculum taught the basics of cell biology; IRM scientists used zebrafish in their studies. It was a perfect match. The program was initially funded by a federal research grant, and has been sustained through a combination of philanthropic gifts and Penn Medicine CAREs grants.
Since then, Shuda’s team has partnered with numerous departments to develop community outreach proposals using BioEYES as a template. They guide departments through the complex process, from writing a competitive funding application to evaluating and collecting data from the program.
“We started getting the reputation that we were the people to come to for anything and everything for the community,” Shuda said. “We empower faculty to build programs that communicate their science, and in a way that’s sustainable and institutionalized in their departments.”
These collaborations have resulted in a portfolio of programs supported by research grants, including:
- DrosoPHILA, led by the Bashaw Lab and brought to Philadelphia high schools, which teaches biomedical science using fruit flies to understand mechanisms of the nervous system
- The Penn Academy for Reproductive Sciences—a Penn campus workshop, led by Obstetrics & Gynecology clinicians and scientists, for high school students to explore reproductive health research
- The Penn Academy for Skin Health—another on-campus workshop for high school students, led by the Dermatology department, to learn the basics of skin biology and use laboratory equipment to recognize dermatologic conditions
Shuda’s team also oversees a pathway program for high school students. Each summer, up to 25 students who have previously attended one of Penn Medicine’s other high school STEM programs are hired for paid positions in participating labs to gain lab experience, mentorship, and career-readiness skills.
“Even if by the end they think, ‘Science isn’t for me,’ the program is still leading them somewhere,” Shuda said. “It’s to ultimately set them up for pursuing a career.”
The junior scientist perspective
Shuda is always thinking about ways to evolve the STEM programs and encourages her team to do so too. While this work started when Shuda was a teacher, it transformed based on her experiences as a parent.
When Shuda’s daughter was in preschool, Shuda brought a fish tank and little hand lenses to her classroom, where the children identified characteristics of the fish like stripes and dots. She gave each student a paper cut-out of a fish to color what they saw. “That’s them making an observation”—the first step of the scientific method, said Shuda. The activity evolved into BioEYES Explorers Pre-K.
More recently, Shuda brought DrosoPHILA—typically only taught in high schools—into her son’s fourth grade class to test an elementary school model.
“You can really see the impact of the programs through the lens of your own kid,” she said. “It helps you understand how other kids may see them.”
Soon, Shuda’s team will also pilot a new approach to teaching K-12 genetics in Philadelphia and Baltimore middle schools.
“We’ve certainly evolved, but we’ve stayed true to what we wanted to do,” Shuda said. “No matter where you live, what language you speak, every kid should experience being a scientist.”
Building bridges of trust
Shuda has been involved in Penn Medicine’s STEM outreach for 17 years, but all the work leads back to BioEYES.
Over its nearly 25 years, BioEYES has reached more than 180,000 students around the world and has received multiple national awards. Teachers sign up to bring BioEYES to their classrooms year after year, telling Shuda it has boosted their confidence in teaching science lessons beyond the program.
Researchers at other academic institutions apply to have BioEYES as part of their own labs. Outreach educators, like Shuda once was, travel to deliver the materials and provide training to properly conduct the curriculum. The work has taken them coast to coast, to Australia, and newly, in 2026, to London.
Shuda is reminded of BioEYES’ impact every day in her office by the countless thank-you cards on the walls.
I enjoyed answering the hard questions. It was very challenging but fun to me, wrote one student.
Thank you for coming to this school. I loved it so much, another wrote.
Even more rewarding than the thank-you cards is seeing students thrive after the program. Shuda enjoys receiving students’ college and job updates through emails and LinkedIn posts. She was especially happy to see a former student apply to join her own team.
Joshua Kouassi remembers BioEYES coming to his fifth-grade class. Now one of Shuda’s outreach educators, he teaches the BioEYES and DrosoPHILA lessons and has become a role model for the kids.
“He’s awesome in front of a classroom,” said Shuda. “He’s an activist by heart. He wants his neighborhood to flourish.”
When students hear that Kouassi was once in their position, “a switch in their head happens” and they become more engaged with the experiments, Kouassi said. “They see where I am now—I think that helps see their own future.”
Making these connections helps “build bridges of trust” and introduces kids to careers they may not have considered, said Shuda. “It’s critical that we understand the talent and the opportunity in our own backyard.”
But before kids can imagine themselves in those careers, she said, they must first experience the thrill of doing science themselves.
“When kids see the hatched larvae start swimming in their petri dish, and they freak out, it’s the best thing ever,” said Shuda. “It’s a sense of pride that they were doing science, and they did it well to have a successful outcome. Now that’s super cool.”
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