Students aimed at a dart board representing a blood sample, which consisted mainly of red blood cells and several parasites, viruses and tumor cells scattered throughout. The game was to aim to throw a dart at the disease-related cells — the “diagnostically relevant” cells in this scenario.

Sam Finn, a senior research associate at Zymo Research working with the Oncology Diagnostic Team, helped to host this interactive game booth at the “BioFestival” on Tuesday.

The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences as well as Zymo Research — a biotechnology company that provides biomedical tools and services to researchers globally — collaborated to host their first-ever BioFestival on Tuesday. The event showcased research conducted by Dornsife graduate students studying life sciences and displayed biomedical tools and resources provided by Zymo.

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“The main purpose of this event is to shed a spotlight on disruptive research. So we are looking for game-changing, world-changing research,” said Christian Camacho, the technical support manager at Zymo and a member of the BioFestival organization committee.

A large part of the event was the lightning talk competition, in which 10 applicants were selected to present their “disruptive research,” entering a competition similar to“Shark Tank”, Camacho said. After presenting within a five-minute time constraint, contestants received a score from a panel of judges, and the winner was awarded $5,000 as well as access to Zymo products.

Lexie Scholtz, a doctorate candidate at the Armani Lab studying biomedical engineering, was one of the selected competitors at the lightning talk competition. She developed a tool designed to measure the magnetic susceptibility of particles in a more accessible way to the average researcher.

“Talks like this, where you have a general audience, is a really good exercise — how do I communicate my research to people who aren’t necessarily like the experts right within my field?” Scholtz said. “A very important part of science and engineering is being able to communicate results to a broad audience.”

Numerous posters were on display around the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, showcasing research on various topics, including synthetic biology, microbiology, neuroscience and more. Students could win first, second and third place based on which research was considered the most “disruptive” and “creative.”

“We’re looking at creativity, especially for tackling very big problems, whether that is global warming, whether that is a very particular diagnostic issue that has been troublesome, since you do things that are tough to cure,” Camacho said.

When assessing the disruptive nature of the research presented, Camacho said it was a matter of answering the question: “Is the science different than what is currently available?”

Disruptive research is “changing the way that we’re doing something and just presenting a new solution,” said Diana Jia, the marketing director at Zymo Research.

Aside from the competition, several booths displayed tools and resources provided by Zymo. Each of the tools is used in molecular life science and is substantive in enabling scientists in this field to conduct research.

One showcased the process and significance of automation in biotechnology. Samuel Kirchhevel, the automation associate at Zymo Research, operated the booth.

Kirchhevel said one application of automation involves working with gut microbiomes. By using automation technology, medicinal institutions and industrial labs can process data efficiently so that medicine can be personalized for each individual’s needs much faster.

Zymo provides many of its resources and tools to USC students for research purposes, especially for the University’s core labs.

“The future is automation. So for any students who are interested either in the biotech side or on the computer science side. This is really an emerging side of biotech that is gonna blow up in the next few years,” Kirchhevel said.

In order to support disruptive research, Zymo’s role is to make technology more accessible to the scientific community so that people can use it even without a background in computer science or engineering, Kirchhevel said.

USC was the first school where the BioFestival came to fruition, and Zymo plans to host the festival at several other schools around the country, Camacho said.

“I think that focusing on disruptive science is really important,” Finn said. “There’s so much you can do with this with science in general, that looking at it through a sustainable and disruptive mindset and framework is the way that science is going to change. Hopefully, we can see big progress.”