AAAS Report Highlights Promising Innovation for Undergraduate STEM Education

Devon Cancilla at Western Washington University took a different approach to the instrument access problem. With the power of the Internet, Cancilla and his team built a web-based remote laboratory that connects students to scientific instruments all across the country. According to Cancilla, expensive instruments at universities are idle roughly 70% of the time. So their system, called the Integrated Laboratory Network, allows students to operate instruments remotely through a computer 24/7. Cancilla says that making instruments accessible through cyberspace not only gives more students access to state-of-the-art instruments, but it also gives more students the chance to use the instrument on their own.