Sparking Curiosity Across the U.S. With MilliporeSigma’s Curiosity Cube

The Curiosity Cube, a 22x10-foot shipping container turned mobile science lab from MilliporeSigma, the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has been hard at work sparking kids’ interest in STEM careers on its fifth annual U.S tour. The Curiosity Cube’s mission is to provide tomorrow’s scientists with access to hands-on science education. In fact, of the schools the Curiosity Cube will visit this year, the aim is that 95% will be classified as Title 1. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the Title 1 program provides financial assistance to schools with a high number percentage of children from low-income families, ensuring that all children meet challenging state academic standards. This year, the Curiosity Cube’s experiments focus on contamination. 

Now halfway through the 2023 tour, the Curiosity Cube has visited 51 communities in the U.S., hosted 76 events out of the total 124 planned and has sparked interest in STEM in more than 13,600 young minds.

The 2023 tour started in San Diego, where Curiosity Cube Coordinators worked alongside MilliporeSigma employee volunteers from the company’s viral vector manufacturing facility in Carlsbad. The tour stopped at the San Diego Festival of Science & Engineering and several local middle schools. The Curiosity Cube then headed to Tempe the following week, where it made a stop at Ostrich Fest.

Following a short break, the Curiosity Cube made a cross-country journey to Cincinnati to spark curiosity in students from the Buckeye State. Scientists walked elementary school students through the experiments with WLWT-TV stopping by to talk with Coordinator Danielle Chavis at the Highland Park Garden about what she enjoys most about the Curiosity Cube. The tour then headed West to Indianapolis before rolling to Pennsylvania.

Landing in Allentown, a new tour stop in 2023, WFMZ-TV covered the action and spoke to students and teachers from the Lehigh Valley Academy about their experience. Continuing its tour through the Keystone State, the Curiosity Cube stopped in Bellefonte to visit a handful of local schools, with WTAJ-TV stopping by to see the experiments in action.

Moving to Rockville, Maryland, the Curiosity Cube visited a few schools with the help of employee volunteers from the company’s contract testing facility in the area. BioBuzz learned more about the tour’s goal of reaching more than 45,000 students. Now two months into the tour, the next stop for the Curiosity Cube was Lake Erie in Cleveland, where WKYC-TV spoke with MilliporeSigma volunteers about the importance of STEM education. 

Following a break for Memorial Day, the Curiosity Cube stopped in Illinois and sparked curiosity in kids across the state. In Kankakee, the Daily Journal stopped by an event with a local nonprofit, Still I Rise, to discuss the need for more exposure to STEM education. WCIA-TV in Urbana spoke to local visitors about what they took away from the tour’s stop in the area.

The Curiosity Cube spent the rest of June and into early July touring I-70 and making an impact in St. Louis and Kansas City. In St. Louis, with the help of MilliporeSigma interns from Harris-Stowe University, KMOV-TV explored the three interactive experiments alongside Coordinator Audra DiMariano. While in St. Louis, the Curiosity Cube was also featured at Pride Fest and Busch Stadium, reaching over 2,200 visitors in that city. When the Curiosity Cube worked its way to Kansas City, 27 volunteers from the company’s Lenexa, Kansas facility helped over 1,000 visitors access hands-on science education. 

Rounding out the month of July, the Curiosity Cube visited Laramie, Wyoming and the Laramie Boomerang wrote about local families experiencing hands-on science at the University of Wyoming. 

The Curiosity Cube’s U.S. tour isn’t over yet, in fact, it still has 11 cities to visit before wrapping up in November. The tour will be headed up and down the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego before returning to the East Coast. To learn more about upcoming stops and request a visit to your town, go to. Want to keep up with the tour? Follow the Curiosity Cube on Instagram at @curiositycube_milliporesigma.