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Standing at the head of a classroom in a building with humming supercomputers making background music, Reinhard Laubenbacher told a group of grade-school teachers, 鈥淭he language of patterns is mathematics. Math underlies absolutely everything.鈥�

The teachers were apt pupils. They sat up straighter, peered with more concentration at their computers, and asked piercing questions as Laubenbacher called them 鈥減attern hunters鈥� and promised that patterns would get their kids excited about math.

Laubenbacher is director of education and outreach at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and founder of Kids' Tech University, which is earning fame for bringing hundreds of children and their parents to campus for weekend sessions. Less well known is the 鈥渢each the teachers鈥� element of the program.

With the teachers, Laubenbacher explored everything from Fibonacci numbers to fractals. Fractals explain the self-similarity of, say, the branching of trees. Fractal formulas inform the beauty of the nautilus shell, the movement of schools of fish, even the appearance of such disparate objects as clouds and crowds.

Miranda Draper, a fourth-grader teacher in Blacksburg, was one of nine teachers looking for ways to re-energize her classroom at Prices Fork Elementary. She said of her students, 鈥淭hey need to be excited about math, and they need to learn that math is everywhere.鈥� Laubenbacher鈥檚 lessons were points well taken, she said. 鈥淢y kids would love the fact that the smallest little detail would affect the big picture.鈥�

Laubenbacher intrigued the teachers by showing them a video clip of a human cell going after a bacterium, successfully chasing and eating the dangerous organism. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 an interesting pattern,鈥� he observed. 鈥淗ow does that happen?鈥� he asked, pointing out that mathematics still has many patterns yet to explain.

Clips from the workshop can be seen in this YouTube video.

Laubenbacher has a high regard for elementary schoolteachers. When he was in fourth grade in his native Germany, a teacher's recommendation set him on the path to college. Otherwise he would have been stuck in a vocational track, which in Germany at the time was irrevocable.

鈥淢y parents were blue-collar workers, and that was not the social stratum that went on to get a higher education,鈥� he said.

The teachers, creating fractal patterns at their computers, found his excitement infectious. They also learned to teach permutations by encouraging kids to choreograph a series of dances using four separate, but not repeated, movements.

鈥淎ll of science is about discovering patterns, and we have not even scratched the surface,鈥� Laubenbacher said. 鈥淭o become a mathematician is to be at the center of understanding how the world works.鈥�