At Aix-Marseille university, we think that the public engagement is crucial for science. Helping science and technology awareness for all must be a priority. Therefore, we chose to participate in some events, giving us the opportunity to explain synthetic biology and molecular engineering to the general public.

This topic was particularly important for us, in France, because the public image of GMOs and synthetic biology is generally awful. Our team wanted to establish communication with the public to converse with them about benefits and drawback of synthetic biology.

March for Science

We participated in the March for Science in Marseille. We found it important to show our support to science, institutions and the role they play in improving our society through innovation. We think that encouraging scientific research is an investment for the future generations.

So we joined scientists and concerned citizens at the March for Science. It is important to show that science must have a greater role in policymaking. As a scientific community, we need to learn how to reach out to the public.

Provence Agricultural Fair

We went to the "Salon de l'agriculture" at Salon-de-Provence. This gathering unites farmers and olive growers from all over France, to find out about recent developments in the farming sector. This event allowed us to discover how aware olive growers are of Xylella fastidiosa, it also gave us the opportunity to find out what kind of product would fit their needs (injection, spraying, soil treatment..).

Thanks to this event we were able to reconsider the project design to fit olives growers needs and design environmental tests to carry out.

Marseille Science Village

A "village des sciences" was organized in Marseille. We see this event as an opportunity to share our project with the public. Thus we prepare some poster about synthetic biology and KILL XYL project.

But we also think that this type of event is an opportunity to communicate to youth about biology and science. Therefore, we extract with them banana's DNA. Lots of children were curious and interested in biology and some of them even proposed new things to do with the help of synthetic biology (e.g. Banana with the taste of kiwis).

Biotechnology forum

As Polytech Marseille organized each year a forum about biotechnology, we used this as an opportunity to present our project to engineering student and teachers. Therefore we did a presentation and a poster session about KILL XYL project.

Thankfully, everything went well and we get interesting feedback about our project. The forum was so much fun and we get the opportunity to present the iGEM competition to new students. This will help to get a new team next year, full of motivated and talented students.

Public survey

As we said, the public opinion should always be taken into account in all product conception's step. Thus, we did a public survey, firstly to sensibilize people to the Xylella fastidiosa problem and secondly to know their mind about our project.