Difference between revisions of "Team:Groningen/Engagement"

On Tuesday the 16th of May 2017 the 17th edition of the Netherlands Biotechnology Conference (NBC-17) was organized by the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV). During this day, 135 professionals and students working in the biotechnology work field were connected to each other and informed during several interactive sessions and keynotes about the latest developments in their work field. Here, we gave a pitch about this years’ Groningen iGEM project and were allowed to present our poster together with other Dutch iGEM teams!

This years’ Maakfestival was held at the Groninger Forum and provided Dutch manufactures – in the broadest sense – who are living in the north of the Netherlands with the opportunity to excite teens about diverse technical projects. We had our own iGEM booth with various attributes from the laboratory, such as (properly sealed) Escherichia coli bacteria with Green Fluorescent Protein and talked about synthetic bacteria to interested people from every age group. Participants were invited to write their own opinion on bacteria, ranging from ‘cute’ to ‘useful’. Besides that Joana gave a short talk about iGEM and synthetic biology in one of the ‘maker talks’. Sometimes, we were even surprised what some children already knew about bacteria. We were really stoked to introduce the fascinating world of synthetic biology.

EVOLVE was set-up on the Noorderzon Performing Arts festival in collaboration with Science Linx, GELIFES (Groningse Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences) and the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). Here, it was demonstrated with various experiments and expositions how evolution works (more or less). An Evolution café was set up where people could meet each other while engaging the interesting topic of evolution. We participated on two days to talk about our project and synthetic biology.

We attended the 12th LAB Symposium in Egmond aan Zee on the 28th of August. This is a yearly scientific conference about Lactic Acid Bacteria. Thanks to the organizing committee we were able to attend the symposium for one day with three people of our team. This was a really interesting experience. It gave us the opportunity to present our poster during the poster sessions and to talk to researchers who are specialized in working with CRISPR-Cas, bacteriophages and Lactococcus Lactis. We talked with Douwe van Sinderen, an expert in bacteriophage research ofthe University College Cork, and Sylvain Moineau, one of the key scientists in the discovery of CRISPR.

The Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute (GBB) is the centre for biomolecular sciences at the University of Groningen. We were invited to present our project and display our poster for subsequent discussion sessions. This enabled us to outline our project idea to local scientists as well as receive questions that stakeholders could also possibly ask as.

After our collaboration, we were invited by the RIVM to join their event RIVM Kennisparade together with all other Dutch iGEM teams. Around 1500 visitors were present this day. We were part of the biotechnology section where we were present as examples of biotechnology in the future. We were excited that so many people were interested in our project and wanted to know what it was about. We had some great discussions with visitors about synthetic biology and the ethical aspects of it. Surprisingly, we got mostly positive reactions about our product design, even if it would be used in a factory!

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We met with Ferdinand van der Graaf to discus the game we are designing concerning synthetic biology safety. He works as a researcher at the UMCG hospital, as well as a teacher at a local highscool. In his teachings he uses a lot of educational games, and had previously designed a game to teach about natural selection. We talked about how to implement game elements in a balanced way while not sacrificing too much of learning elements. Furthermore, he recommended to stick to tried and true game elements that work, something we found to be true too.

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De Jonge Onderzoekers (The Young Researchers) aims to excite young kids, ranging from 8 to 18 years old, in the fields of science and technology. To this end, they organize various courses including the course Nature and Science. We contacted Richel Bilderbeek to give us some tips about preparing lessons for children from 10 to 12 years old. He is highly experienced in educating 7 till 18 year-olds. On the 22nd of September, two members of our team visited one of the extremely popular Friday evening course of Nature and Science, led by Richel in Groningen, to witness first-hand how to attract children’s interests when talking about biology or science in general. Afterwards, we talked with Richel and he provided us with many tips which were in the end extremely helpful when we conducted our own practices for primary school children. You can find more information about our own course below.

The Scholieren Academie organizes activities for primary school and high-school students and this year, together with Stichting Openbaar Onderwijs Oost-Groningen (SOOOG), they set-off a new project which aims to interest East-Groningen primary school children in the university and Biological sciences. Together with project-leader Douwe van der Tuin we turned the project into reality. We are working together with the Scholieren Academie to educate kids. The general goal is informing the kids about the university. What do students do? What am I, a molecular biology student, doing in a laboratory? The Scholieren Academie wants to start this project, because research has shown that kids from the eastern part of the province Groningen, choose less for higher education. By starting really early with informing these kids about the possibilities of the university, the Scholieren Academie hopes that children will choose more often to follow higher education after primary school. We went to some schools to give a guest lecture. A few days later, the children came to the lab to do some experiments themselves. We designed a one-hour guest lecture and a 4 hour practical at the Linnaeusborg, University of Groningen. In total, we welcomed over 200 primary school children between 9 October and 13 October. The local newspaper even dedicated a reporter to write an article about this joint venture. (Dutch)

Science Linx offers high-school students in the Netherlands the possibility to engage with the Science and Engineering faculty of the University of Groningen. They organize and support various activities with the aim to excite kids about the beta-sciences. Science Linx has already been a Groningen iGEM sponsor for many years. In turn, we aid them with various project including helping high school students with their Profiel Werkstuk (Profile Assignment in English). We welcomed a total of 10 high-school students which experimented in our lab based on their own ideas. Two groups wanted to study antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The others were interested in CRISPR and we let them participate in a small part of our own project! The Noorderzon EVOLVE participation was also in cooperation with Science Linx.

During the summer we supervised two Honours Bachelor students with their own synthetic biology project. "For the Honours College, we wanted to perform a deepening research in the 2nd year. We wanted this research to be related to microbiology. So one of us then came with the idea to contact the iGEM team of Groningen. We told them that we would like to try to transform bacteria in a way that they would digest microplastics. We quickly got a response from the iGEM team and they stated that they were glad to let us do our research within their research group. A meeting was set up to meet with 2 PhD students to talk about our plans. The team was very helpful during this starting phase since we had never set up our own research yet. After a couple more meetings our plans took a more realistic shape due to the tips iGEM feasibility. After all these meetings it was time to start working in the lab. Here we got assigned a supervisor which we could ask questions and he helped us get started. The further we got into the 3 weeks of our research, the more responsibilities we got from the iGEM team. Working on your own in a lab on your own research was a new and very instructive experience. At first, we had to get used to this responsibility, because in our regular program all practicals are structured perfectly around you as a student, and so you do not come across the challenges of a real research. An example of this was our strain of bacteria, which was not as competent as we were used to. All in all, we learned a lot about dealing with unexpected complications during synthetic biology research. Therefore, our time with the iGEM team has enriched us with many new experiences. "