With their lab coats on and goggles in place, members of  Mississippi State University’s Biochemistry Club sponsor their first Lab Olympics at 6 p.m. Tuesday in room 221 of Dorman Hall.
Amber Kay, president of the Biochemistry Club, said the Lab Olympics strive to push new members to become engaged and to promote science as a discipline.
“We would like to teach every participant something new about science with our trivia questions that will be at all four stations of the event. We are also using Lab Olympics as a way to get our club name spread throughout campus,” Kay said.
According to Kay, the Lab Olympics will consist of four stations that include lab safety, general biology, microbiology and biochemistry. Each station will allow the teams of three to perform an assigned task, such as filling pipette boxes and answering trivia questions. 
“The key to it all is that it is a race, and each team will be timed. The team with the fastest time will receive a certificate and a free T-shirt,” Kay said. “We hope to reach any student in any science discipline, and we just want people to come out and have an awesome time with free pizza and refreshments.”
Emily Ousterhout, vice president of the Biochemistry Club, said biochemistry explains the chemical processes within a cell along with the merging of chemical and biological processes.
“The Lab Olympics will put to practice the themes of biochemistry,” Ousterhout said. “We are very excited and have been planning this since August.”
Kay said the science, biology, microbiology and biochemistry departments at MSU have assisted in helping prepare for the Lab Olympics.
“We have primarily been working with the biochemistry department, but the microbiology department has donated us microscopes, lab coats, lab safety gear and blood cell smears,” Kay said. 
Perceus Mody, medical technology senior and secretary of the BiochemistryClub, said this year’s Lab Olympics originated from the desire to produce something fun and lab-work oriented.
“You typically see labs centered around serious lab people who are strictly focused on their work, but this is a way to get students to work together or either don’t work in labs to come together and have fun,” Mody said.
Mody said the event also promotes graduate and undergraduate research on campus, because MSU is a highly-merited research university.
“So far we have seven teams that have signed up, which means 21 people,” Mody said. “I expected more, and we were hoping for about 15 to 20 teams to sign up, but this is our first time sponsoring this event, so we didn’t really know what to expect.”
Mody said the club plans to make the Lab Olympics an annual event to be produced every spring.
Individuals still have a chance to register for the Olympics up to the time of the event.