A group of researchers at Northwestern are set on giving high school science a modern makeover: they’re moving the science lab online.

The project, called iLab Network, is using the Internet to give high school students remote access to the science labs of universities around the world, all with just a few clicks of a button. Kemi Jona, principal investigator for the iLab project, said he hoped the project would remove the economic barriers that high schools face in teaching science. Jona is an associate professor and the director of NU’s Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education Partnerships.

“No matter where you live or where you go to school – you can be in inner-city Chicago, you could be in (a) rural downstate district with only 100 kids in your school – you can still get access to top-notch lab equipment that you would never have access to before,” Jona said. “It really levels the playing field.”

The office, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is midway through the two-year project, funded by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The project works by connecting lab devices like microscopes and signal analyzers to the Internet. Teachers and students in high school classrooms can then control the devices remotely with their computers, watching their experiments in real-time via webcam. Students are able to track and save their data and monitor experiments of their designs – all without being in the same room of the equipment they’re using.

The office staff trained 23 teachers across the country for the pilot program of iLab Network. The majority of teachers were Illinois-based, including four teachers from Evanston Township High School. Mark Vondracek, an AP Physics teacher at ETHS and a participant in the iLab Network pilot program, wrote in an e-mail that the program could become a valuable tool for high school teachers who are, above all else, strapped for classroom time.

“There is so much material to get through