It’s a cloudy May afternoon in the Bronx, and cell biologist Ben Dubin-Thaler is standing in his cramped 1974 General Motors “Fishbowl” bus with a small group of seventh graders, ready to talk microscopy. “The first slide we’re going to look at is an onion skin,” he says to the group. “Now, who can draw what a plant cell looks like?” One student eagerly raises his hand and proceeds to draw a near-perfect rectangle on the mini-whiteboard to indicate the cell wall. Dubin-Thaler has only been visiting schools for about 3 months, but the routine is already becoming familiar. It’s hard to imagine that just a few years before, he was finishing his PhD in cell biology at Columbia University and considering taking a research position in Singapore.
It was during that trip to Singapore that Dubin-Thaler found out his bid for the classic Fishbowl bus he had seen on ...
