Picture a high school parking lot early on a Saturday morning and you probably picture a deserted space, quiet after a week of bustling students. But at Gateway High School in Aurora, there are cars in the lot and signs of life coming from the former auto shop behind the school. On thirteen Saturday mornings this 2013-2014 academic year, six teams of students arrive at 9:00am each week excited and enthusiastic to participate in Innovation Academy at the Aurora Public School's (APS) Hyperlab. The space was refurbished and outfitted by Physics Associate Professor Randy Tagg, and funded in part by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. As a part of APS's Pathways program, which seeks to connect students with specialized, real-world curriculum in order to train them for their professional futures, the Hyperlab is a dream come true for Tagg, and a unique haven for students who would rather spend their weekends exploring STEM initiatives than sleeping in.

What makes the Hyperlab special is the line it walks between a 2,500-square-foot space for serious scientific inquiry and a place for students to open their minds to new possibilities. Everything in the lab finds a purpose, and an oversized tub that held pretzels last week becomes an effective water jug this week. What may at first appear to be chaos—islands covered in construction and technological equipment, tables filled with a mish-mash of computers and academic posters under construction, shelves labeled with things like "actuators" and a floor filled with robotics and recycled electronics—is actually a playground for young, scientifically-inclined minds. "It's like a mad scientist's garage," Tagg says, "but it's a lot less mad-scientist-looking now than it was."

In years past, the Innovation Academy was without a home, wandering session-to-session through various spaces at schools all across APS. Last year, Tagg changed all that by getting permission to give the program a permanent home at Gateway's previously abandoned auto-body shop. Tagg has worked hard in the months since to bring together materials from his personal collection, along with donations from multiple sources and supplies available through APS. "Now there is some organization to it—that's organization in my reference frame—most people would say it's still 'mad scientist.'" Tagg smiles. He doesn't want the lab to become a hyper-systematized and catalogued mecca of order; he wants it to stay a place where students feel comfortable getting their hands dirty and exploring. He says, "It's 'purposeful mad scientist.'"

Students in grades 9-12 from all over Aurora Public Schools use the Hyperlab to expand knowledge outside the classroom as part of the Academic and Career Pathways program. The Innovation Academy has run for three years, with between 15 and 30 students participating each year, and has been funded in part through a Piton Foundation grant to Aurora and the Aurora Lights program. In the program's first year, Tagg provided a list of approved projects for students to investigate, but as the program has grown, he has found value in letting the students investigate whatever motivates them. "This year, students who have been in the process as 10th- or 11th-graders can apply to become principal investigators (PIs)," he explains. "They propose what they want to do—with no small amount of counseling from me. As young people, they have some general sense of what they want to do, but no experience for shaping it into a project. So that's where I come in."

Judy Bleakley, Program Director of the Aurora Pathways Innovation Academy, works in collaboration with Tagg overseeing the planning, implementation and evaluation of the program to ensure an optimal learning experience for students. As a retired APS elementary school principal, Bleakley's enjoying the opportunity Innovation Academy is affording her to work with older students of such a high caliber. She sees science possibilities all around her now, and recently recycled some materials used to make porcelain crown molds from her dentist's office, knowing that anything might come in useful in the future at the Hyperlab. She says of the students, "We're cultivating innovators; students who can work collaboratively with others on finding solutions to real world problems. They learn that innovation takes perseverance and the ability to learn from mistakes when something fails. Their passion to make a difference is contagious."

One student-generated project, led by William Smith High School senior and PI Lizbeth Alvarez (who plans to become a doctor and is already shadowing a gastroenterologist in Thornton), is proposing ways to conduct abdominal surgery in microgravity. A group from Gateway High School with musical backgrounds, led by PI Friedrich Amouzou, is working with CU Denver engineering student and former DJ Kevon "Kaveman" Hayes to explore ways music can be used to move bio-mechatronics (using a synced robotic exoskeletal hand). The program utilizes the talents of multiple CU Denver students and alumni as project advisors and mentors, including: Brooke Buckland, who is earning her teaching license through the School of Education and Human Development and interning in APS; and alum Andrea Cortez, who graduated with a BS in biology and was a student assistant in the physics department.

Isaac Andrade is a senior at Hinkley High School and has chosen CU Denver as the college he will attend in the fall. He is the PI on a project investigating quantum effects in cell membrane ion channels, and sees this as a project that links neurology (his chosen future career) to physics. He put CU Denver at the top of his list for college choices because, he says, "I see it as a place where I can really focus on my career choice and on where I want to go, which is med school." He thinks he might be interested in attending medical school for neurology in Mexico, following in the footsteps of a family friend and MD. He says, "What I've learned with this ion channel project just made me more excited to learn how the brain works. That's most interesting personally, to me."

As a capstone to the year, student teams participated in the April 25 CU Denver Research and Creative Activities Symposium (RaCAS), of which Tagg was a founder. The RaCAS gave these students a chance to see what presenting research in college and beyond will be like, and the students found the experience rewarding. Dillon Elliott of Central High School has been investigating how it might be possible to power medical devices, like pacemakers, using the body's own energy. Discussing his findings with college students and professors at RaCAS encouraged him to continue his research, he says, "Everyone here is so supportive, especially when they find out that we're still in high school. They seem really impressed with what we did." Elliott says he looks forward to answering questions that his Hyperlab project posed in his college years, and plans to come back to the Hyperlab to serve a project mentor in the future. He credits Tagg and the Hyperlab with helping him gain confidence, saying, "It was fun to do this, but it also feels like a real accomplishment. It feels good to look at what we did, and know I can do things like this now."

Tagg's dream for the Hyperlab was realized as soon as students began showing up there to explore science on their own terms, discovering topics of real interest to them, and finding inspiration to keep asking the important questions that will help solve the problems of the future. In the future, Tagg is planning to continue the efforts of the Innovation Academy, and wants to construct a curriculum for grades 9-12 using Hyperlab resources to stage courses on instrumentation and exploration in nonlinear dynamics and biophysics. While Tagg sees his own involvement at the lab decreasing as APS takes over, he knows he has established something that will contribute to the greater good for many years to come.