Team:Edinburgh UG/Engagement

Public Engagement

Introduction

Public engagement is important to let people know more about SMORE and synthetic biology. We have met with children, young scientists and professionals to promote reliable synthetic biology and to listen to SMORE’s potential users.

Talk at Synthsys – Centre of Synthetic and Systems Biology

How do we know if SMORE can help researchers? The most direct way is to talk to them! We presented SMORE to synthetic biologist in Synthsys, the centre of synthetic and systems biology in Edinburgh. Nothing beats a peer review when it comes to testing your work! As scary as it seemed, SMORE got a lot of positive and constructive feedback from professionals. Furthermore, after the talk, we have already received enquiries from scientists to use our toolkit for their research!

Talk with EUYSRA and Synthetic Biology Society

EUYSRA (Edinburgh University Young Scientific Researchers Association) and Edinburgh Synthetic Biology Society have some of the most enthusiastic molecular biologists! We introduced SMORE along with iGEM to them, to listen to feedback, as well as to promote synthetic biology as a whole!

Doors Open Day

The Open Day of University of Edinburgh was an event where everyone can come to know what’s happening. One of the aims was to introduce science to young people. We set up a booth to introduce biology to children, as well as the future prospect and caution of synthetic biology to visitors to promote a correct attitude towards biological sciences. We also promoted SMORE and iGEM to those who were interested in a career in biological sciences.