Obtaining real gains in science achievement and child health requires the expertise of many partners. Seattle Children’s is proud to join classroom teachers and fellow community partners united in the belief that high-quality education can help advance child health and inspire children to choose future careers in the health sciences.
The Science Adventure Lab team forges vital partnerships with teachers to enhance and augment science and health instruction at schools throughout Washington. By supplementing their classroom curriculum with a Science Adventure Lab visit, teachers help expose their students to fun investigations that use real research equipment often unavailable in school science labs.
Plus, students are given access to the expertise of a team of instructors with real-world experience as research scientists. The Science Adventure Lab team is led by PhD-level instructors who have extensive scientific knowledge in areas such as microbiology and neuroscience, as well as a passion for teaching. The team also includes master's-trained educational specialists who help develop the Science Adventure Lab curriculum, assessment activities and program evaluation tools.
Amanda Jones, PhD
Director
Dr. Jones received a bachelor’s degree in Science and a PhD in microbiology and infectious disease from the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. She completed postdoctoral fellowship training in pediatric infectious disease at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics from 2002 to 2008 and held adjunct faculty appointments in the Departments of Pathobiology and Global Health. Dr. Jones co-developed the centralized educational curriculum for the Department of Pediatrics' Fellow’s College and served as the co-director from 2003 to 2008.
She has taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Washington and mentored undergraduate students, graduate students and fellows. In 2006, she was awarded the Pathobiology Department Teaching Award by the University of Washington School of Public Health. She is the author of numerous papers on the subject of infectious diseases. Dr. Jones is director of the Health and Science Education Outreach Program at Seattle Children’s.
Mark Ruffo, PhD, MBA
Manager
Dr. Ruffo received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He worked for the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, for three years before moving to Seattle for graduate school, where he received a PhD in neurobiology and behavior from the University of Washington and an MBA from the UW's Foster School of Business. He completed his postgraduate training as the Lynn Diamond Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
Dr. Ruffo has taught a wide variety of classes at Georgetown University, South Seattle Community College, the University of Washington and MIT. He also has engaged in training, teaching and curriculum development as a consultant for the Princeton Review for over 10 years, working with both high-school and college students. Most recently, he was the marketing manager for Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Dr. Ruffo is the manager of the Health and Science Education Outreach Program at Seattle Children’s.
Jeremy Kim
Mobile Lab Scientist
Jeremy Kim received his bachelor’s degree in both biology and philosophy with a minor in chemistry at Seattle Pacific University in 2010. He has been involved in leadership positions at Seattle Pacific in their Navigating Pre-Health Studies mentor program, which aims to help undergraduate students accomplish their educational goals. Mr. Kim has also been actively involved as a lab instructor for various biology and chemistry classes at Seattle Pacific. His research in molecular biology focused on investigating redundant biosynthetic pathways in bacterial genomes. Mr. Kim is the mobile lab scientist for the Health and Science Education Outreach Program at Seattle Children’s.
Neill Warfield, MEd
Senior Training and Curriculum Development Specialist
Neill Warfield teaches fourth and fifth grade at Spruce Street School in downtown Seattle. In his 14-year career he has also served as a teacher and curriculum coordinator for public and international schools in Louisiana, Honduras, and New York City. He holds a bachelor of arts in English from Yale University and a master's in bilingual elementary education from the Bank Street College of Education in New York.
Mr. Warfield is a frequent workshop presenter for colleagues in the independent-school community, and has participated in numerous professional development and curriculum reform initiatives in mathematics and science, including the University of Washington’s Summer Institutes in Physics and Physical Science and an ongoing association with the Mathematics Education Collaborative.