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Tawfiq Rawnak’s Additional Information Regarding Boundless Biotech

The following below encompasses our pitch form that was sent to Philanthropy Tank, a

non-profit organization that invests in projects that can create a difference in Palm Beach County

and Martin County in Florida.

Status Update: Achieved finalist position and awarded $11,500 to conduct the project on

March 30th, 2021.

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1. Project Name - What Are You Calling Your Project? *

Boundless BioTech

2. Concisely describe the PROJECT for which you are seeking funding. What are you trying to

accomplish? (300-word max.)

The news of the collapse of the FIU bridge unveiled a key issue: the lack of education for future

engineers. Often, schools attempt to educate prospective engineers through bookwork and multiple choice

examinations; this leads to engineering students being underprepared for entering the workforce and the

deficit of engineers in the workforce.

Boundless BioTech is an organization that aims to correct the broken education system that

disproportionately affects low-income communities. Boundless BioTech is composed of three goals, one of

which is improving the educational system for prospective Biomedical Engineering (BME) / Bioengineering

students by compiling advanced curriculums from select universities (i.e. Johns Hopkins University),

offering tutoring services from current BME / Bioengineering majors to high school students, through

websites such as edX and Coursera, as well as licenses to many schools’ lectures in Biomedical Engineering.

We plan to work specifically with Palm Beach Lakes High School; specifically, we are going to completely

rework their biotechnology program using the curriculums mentioned above. Students will attend their

classes within this program every weekday, and they will be completing a variety of labs and meeting with

experts in the field of biomedical engineering. They will attend fundamental courses such as Introduction to

MATLAB in 9th grade and Computational Biology in 10th grade.

Our second goal is to improve the current equipment in schools. We want to steer students away

from books and purchase improved equipment for students in select Biology and STEM classes, including

BME equipment kits and computers. Current standard computers in Palm Beach County have aged and

cannot run essential programs in BME, such as Python and MATLAB. Funding would be resourced to buy

licenses for programs and suitable computers in bulk to give to each student in the biotech program at Palm

Beach Lakes High at no charge to their families

If you are partnering or working together with anyone/an organization to execute your project, please

describe how you will be specifically working with them/the organization. Please define the roles and

responsibilities for both you and the partner. If you aren’t partnering with anyone, you can just say “not

applicable.” (300-word max.)

We will be closely working with Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, and Palm Beach State

College. Firstly, Scripps Research Institute is a local company that focuses on biomedical research and

biotechnology. Through contact with their board of education, Scripps Research will provide guest speakers

and lab members to consult with our selected pilot school, Palm Beach Lakes High School. In addition, along

with the curriculum base as part of the “3-stair plan” for Boundless BioTech, Scripps Research will offer a

select number of students to conduct research within the labs of Scripps Research, which will offer a

widespread amount of research opportunities for students who are not able to experience it through other

means. Examples can include developing prosthetic arms.

Secondly, our next partner will be Palm Beach State College, which offers to open computer labs

where students are able to work together and have collaborative sessions.In addition, we will be closely

working with their biotechnology program to make use of their resources and provide optimal education

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for future biomedical engineers in low-income communities. Working with the Lake Worth and Palm

Beach Gardens campus, we plan to allow tutoring services from Biotechnology professors to further offer

opportunities for low-income students.

Lastly, we are working together with the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins

University. From their ranking as the best biomedical engineering program in the U.S., they will provide

their core curriculum and crucial skills, such as mastery in Microsoft Office, Python, LabView, and

MATLAB. Additionally, through their Matriculate program, which aims to offer individual mentors in

biomedical engineering and biotechnology; each high school student at Palm Beach Lakes High School will

have the opportunity to learn about Biomedical Engineering clubs in Hopkins, such as the Biomedical

Engineering Society, and have a mentor through their curriculum.

3. Is this an existing project that has been active in the community for 1 or more years, or is your project

in the starting phase?

Starting Project

4. Amount you are requesting from Philanthropy Tank? (Annual 1 Year Project: $1,000 min - $5,000 max

/ Sustainable Project $5,000 min - $15,000 max.)

$15,000 [Sustainable Project]

6. Who will your project be serving? What is the target population of your project? Please include any

demographical information you can – like age, grade, ethnicity, gender, location, or any other relevant

demographics. (300-word max.)

Our project aims to provide high school students in impoverished areas within our county insight and

experience into the biomedical engineering field. These areas typically have schools that receive very little

funding because they are primarily populated by low-income families. Most low-income students don’t even

know what biomedical engineering is, but it’s a growing field with potential that could make use of any

prospective biomedical engineers it can get. High schools, especially in impoverished areas, do not have the

funding to implement a program that can truly introduce the basics of biotech to students pursuing the field.

Many programs that exist in low-income schools are just forcing students to learn out of a textbook and

memorize vocabulary terms, which is not beneficial towards their knowledge of biomedical engineering.

Boundless BioTech strives to provide students in these schools with valuable experience in the biomedical

engineering field while simultaneously offering a helping hand to the schools themselves to prevent them from

financially stretching themselves out.

A significant and concerning number of high schools in the county do not provide students with the

tools nor the resources required to gain a proper understanding of engineering, especially schools with

primarily low income students. According to datausa.io, a website that compiles data across specific majors

across the US, over 50% of biomedical engineers are Caucasian, and the numbers begin to dwindle for

minorities, with ~3% African-American population and ~7% Hispanic-Americans. Schools with a higher

minority population, such as Palm Beach Lakes High School, with a 96% minority rate and 79%

economically challenged, have a major disadvantage when it comes to students pursuing biomedical

engineering. We need more students within minority populations to have the opportunity to create a career