Each year, the Beckman Institute welcomes community members to encounter the science, meet the people, and experience the impact of discovery during the Beckman Institute Open House. It happens in April at the same time as Engineering Open House.
IHSI began participating as an exhibitor at the open house in 2025, shortly after moving to Beckman from its previous office space on the corner of University and Lincoln Ave. The IHSI exhibit, Building Healthier Communities through Research, helps visitors understand how research happens – all the way from idea to impact.
Designed to be hands-on and kid-friendly, the exhibit has five activities representing each stage of the research cycle. IHSI staff and student volunteers from the Community-Academic Scholars program help guide visitors through each activity. The graphics, theme, and prize at the end help to engage school-aged students, though all ages can learn from the phase descriptions and the various “Did you know?” features at each activity.
Phase 1: Big Idea!
Idea(s) and strategic planning
In the first stage of the research cycle, researchers work alone or with partners to identify important questions. They look for gaps in knowledge—things we don’t fully understand—or problems that need better solutions. Like placing a light in a dark space, researchers shine a light on important questions!
Activity: Fill the knowledge box! Place each item you are given into the correct box based on its area of study in health and wellness. Just as you are helping to fill the box with items, researchers help fill in knowledge by answering questions about things we don’t yet fully understand.
Did you know? IHSI supports research and innovation across all areas of personal, public, and planetary health.
Phase 2: Team Up!
Build the research team
A research team is made up of many different people with different roles. Each person brings their own special skills to help the team succeed! Just like how different characters have unique abilities, research teams need experts with different skills to work together for success.
Activity: Build a research team! Match each expert to the correct role on the research team. A strong team leads to a strong project!
Did you know? Researchers team up with IHSI because we have excellent in-house experts and many partners in health.
Phase 3: Find Funds!
Find funding opportunities
Research is expensive, so teams must find organizations, agencies, or foundations that can fund their work. But funding is limited, and researchers must compete to get it!
Activity: Treasure hunt! Dig through the sand to uncover hidden treasures, just like researchers seek out funding calls, or Requests for Proposals. Once you find a treasure, match it to the correct research project to see how funding supports important discoveries.
Did you know? IHSI’s largest award is an up to $33 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to drastically improve surgical outcomes for cancer tumor removal.
Phase 4: Make A Plan!
Proposal development
The research team writes a detailed plan, called a proposal, for how they will use the funds to develop a solution to a health challenge. Funders often provide many guidelines for research teams to follow.
Activity: Plan a nutritious meal! Imagine you are planning a meal for a guest. Your guest has requested a protein-rich meal that is dairy-free and includes fresh fruits and vegetables. Choose foods from the assortment (or explain what you think is missing) to create a meal that meets the given requirements, just like researchers follow specific guidelines in their study plans!
Did you know? IHSI’s foundational program, the NIH Grant Writing Series, prepares early-career faculty to submit a strong proposal to the National Institutes of Health, a major funder for health-related research.
Phase 5: Get To Work!
Research implementation and translation
Once funded, research teams design studies, test ideas, analyze results, and share discoveries. Ideally, these findings lead to real-world solutions—a process called translation.
Activity: Run your own experiment! How does deep breathing affect your body? Measure your pulse, do 2–3 sets of block breathing and measure again. Did your pulse change? What else did you notice? Share your findings!
Did you know? IHSI and Research IT provide Illinois REDCap, a secure data collection tool for Illinois faculty, staff, and students. Its strong security measures make it ideal for collecting sensitive health data.
Congratulations!
At then end, we congratulate the visitor and hand them a prize (a color-changing ruler!) for making it through the research process and helping us create real-world solutions that improve health. Visitors are reminded that there are many actions they can take to build a healthier community – you don’t have to be a researcher to make a difference! As a community member, you can:
- Participate in studies
- Share evidence-based information
- Support research through gifts/donations
- Advocate for health initiatives
The IHSI exhibit poster also helps visitors quickly understand IHSI at a glance:
What is the problem?
There are many health problems that are not easily solved. As examples, think of the challenges associated with caring for our aging population, eliminating food insecurity and poverty, reversing the effects of climate change on human health, or monitoring and managing chronic disease and mental health across the lifespan. They require a lot of people with different knowledge and skills working together to solve them.
How are you working to solve it?
IHSI supports, trains, and connects individual researchers and students, organizations, and communities with different health expertise. We help people work together on research projects that lead to better treatments, systems, technology, or other ways to make people’s lives healthier.
What impact could this have on society?
When we successfully work together, there’s no limit to what we can do! We strive to make our lives and communities better by improving personal, public, and planetary health.
To learn more about IHSI, visit healthinstitute.illinois.edu and join our email list.