LabXchange: Seven Million Learners Worldwide... and Growing!

If, like me, you’re a parent who is concerned about keeping your kids’ love for learning on track during this time of COVID-induced school closures, you might want to check out LabXchange. Launched just over a year ago by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Amgen Foundation, this online platform offers access at no cost to virtual laboratory-based education in biology. It’s one of several Amgen Foundation-sponsored educational initiatives that aim to inspire the next generation of innovators.

Among the many educators who have used LabXchange during the pandemic is Silvia Maria Lippo, a high-school science teacher in Naples, Italy. When that country went on COVID-19 lockdown, Silvia Maria encouraged her students to join LabXchange “virtual classrooms” to learn about the new coronavirus. Click here to listen as her students describe in their own words what they most appreciate about their experience.      

I couldn’t be more pleased with how LabXchange has taken off in barely more than a year of existence. At the end of March, it surpassed seven million unique visitors, who have come from some 230 different countries and territories – in other words, from almost everywhere in the world. This is fitting since, as we like to say, “everyone needs science, and science needs everyone.”

Congratulations to everyone who has helped to make LabXchange such a big success in such a short time.