Swampscott resident Don Pinkerton is expanding access to hands-on science by creating a community learning space through LynnLab.
“There’s no organization that does any sort of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) enrichment in Lynn other than what I do,” Pinkerton said. “There’s some that sort of do it as a part of their structure, but nothing dedicated to it, and that was the impetus for this.”
Pinkerton launched LynnLab three years ago to bring STEM and life-science programming to what he calls “a science desert.” Lynn, the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts, has long lacked science resources, especially for students outside of school.
Even though there aren’t resources, Pinkerton said that doesn’t mean the children are lacking talent. He mentioned Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, who said he didn’t care much about preserving Albert Einstein’s brain but instead about the fact that “there are people who have equal talent who lived and died in fields and sweatshops,” Pinkerton said.
“We need to identify those people,” Pinkerton said. “It’s not just the Einsteins but anybody who could contribute. You can’t afford to miss some brilliant idea…So that’s what we’re trying to do, bring these folks forward.”
The city was designated by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council as “BioReady,” meaning the community is ready to host biotechnology facilities based on zoning practices and infrastructure capacity. Lynn was designated as a top level of platinum.
“There was a big meeting a few years ago with the mayor and a few other people who asked ‘How do we make this happen?’” Pinkerton said. “Since then, the biotech market is really terrible. It’s a lot of unemployed people right now, so it’s not so great.”
So Pinkerton decided to form LynnLab.
He pointed to a movement of DIY Bio, kind of a bio makerspace, around the world, with one in Boston called BosLab and another iteration in Baltimore called the Baltimore Underground Science Space.
“Many of these labs are really designed for people in science who need a space to work on their own projects,” Pinkerton said. “You work as a scientist at a biotech firm. You have an idea, but you can’t do that there. So this is a lab that is a working laboratory that gives people space to sort of think, just like a makerspace.”
As a life sciences educator, Pinkerton wanted to focus on the educational aspects of STEM as well.
LynnLab hosts pop-up events at farmers markets and festivals to bring science activities to both children and adults. The organization also does partner programs to bring educational activities to different places like the Lynn YMCA, the Lynn Museum, Raw Art Works and libraries.
More recently, LynnLab received a grant from the state to run an eight-Saturday program for 24 high school students at the North Shore Community College.
“Each Saturday I bring an instructor in who teaches them some cool new thing in science or biomedical research,” Pinkerton said. “We built an EKG. We had a whole session on AI. We did some genetics around CRISPR, gene editing, and things like that.”
In October the students experimented with Agar art, which uses live microorganisms to create images in a Petri dish. The science and art blend together with colored and fluorescent bacteria that the students used to “paint” designs.
They also did ELISA, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, tests for antigens.
“All of the kids in the program go to high school in Lynn,” Pinkerton said. “Everybody needs opportunities…They just need that leg up. There’s no lack of talent. It’s just a lack of opportunity.”
