College Students use ‘zombie science’ to learn about disease spread

Exclusive: Zombie apocalypse? Students use ‘zombie science’ to learn about disease spread

A zombie apocalypse: Is it medically possible? Scenarios depicting large-scale attacks of the undead have been playing out on the big screen for years.

And this fall, they’ll hit classrooms too.

Students around the country can now immerse themselves in “zombie pandemics” in order to learn about how diseases spread and affect the body. It’s all part of the new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Behind Hollywood Program, which teachers and students can download for free online to use at home or in the classroom.

The series was created by Texas Instruments (TI) and The Science & Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and seeks to inspire student’s interest in math and science careers. The STEM program will include installments on everything from forensics to zombies and superheroes.

“STEM jobs are now the fastest growing opportunities for young people,” Melendy Lovett, president of Texas Instruments Education Technology told FoxNews.com. “So it’s really important to (us) to be part of building a strong pipeline of STEM capable students, and that’s what drives our focus, getting more students interested and excited about STEM and achieving at high levels in science and math."

While zombies are not a real life concern, the elements explored in the program closely echo real life scenarios of disease spread, thanks to the expert advice of Dr. Steven Schlozman, a professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book The Zombie Autopsies.

“If you…get rid of (the) rising from the dead, (zombies) will map more comfortably than most folks would like onto real neurobiological explanations and phenomenon,” Schlozman told FoxNews.com. “Then you can play that tongue-in-cheek morbid game of how would that happen.”

So how exactly would a zombie apocalypse begin? First, mankind would need to be hit by a virus capable of simultaneously attacking multiple regions of the brain, Schlozman said

[link to www.foxnews.com]