August 11, 2026 — On a rainy morning in late July, Professor Sunny Jung asked a group of New York state schoolteachers to consider the biology of the aquatic snail.
With only one foot, the snail can move and feed, and they do it with an efficient undulating motion that can draw in particles from a distance 10 times greater than their body length.
“They are very efficient at pulling in water from the surface without sucking in the bulk fluid,” said Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, at a workshop for New York state teachers offered by a team of researchers and staff at Cornell, New York Sea Grant (NYSG), Princeton University and the University of Michigan. Now in its second year, the program gives teachers the tools to apply Cornell research in their classrooms, with lesson plans and hands-on materials they can share with their learners.
The workshop’s lessons center on the application of Jung’s research to a problem of increasing concern: the proliferation of microplastics in waterways. Inspired by the undulating movement of the snail, Jung designed a simple robotic system that can pull surface water in and filter microplastics out. With a team of collaborators, the group put the mechanism on a robot they named Mollusca and created both lab-scale prototypes and a build-your-own version for schools.
As Jung presented the research, the wires, circuit boards, motors and many 3D-printed components of the Mollusca robots lay in disassembled piles on a back table. Before day’s end, the teachers would build the robots, test them in a kiddie pool filled with small pieces of plastic called nurdles, and troubleshoot just like students, just like researchers, turning the conference room in Upson Hall into a makeshift robotics lab.
“The Sea Grant trainings are the best I’ve ever done,” said Emily Colletta, head of the gifted and talented program at North Tonawanda Intermediate School in North Tonawanda, New York, who was attending the workshop for the second time. “They’re super interactive, and it’s always local, which makes it easier to integrate and for the kids to benefit. And they always provide us with hands-on materials we can take back to our classrooms. It’s pretty special.”