Team:GZHS-United/Engagement
Public Engagement and Education
Talk to the Public
We talked to the society about their opinions on synthetic biology, GMO and mosquitos, and their opinions have directed us the way to a better project.
Surveys
We have designed two questionnaires and distributed them online to investigate people’s attitude towards mosquito control and genetically modified organisms. Finally, over 860 responses were collected, for our results, click here
Synthetic Biology and iGEM Club
2/3 of students in the synthetic biology club haven’t got any chance to learn the issue of GMO and technologies in synthetic biology in a comprehensive view until they got into the club. Discussion in the club with these students is a perfect chance for us to get to know the attitude and concerns of the general public towards generic modification technology.
We have collected and discussed many frequently asked questions about GMO, like whether eating GMO would change people’s gene, whether eating GMO would cause cancer and what GMOs could be seen in daily life.
Public Education
We used various ways to promote knowledge about mosquito control, GMO and synthetic biology to the public.
Lectures and Workshops
We established numerous offline and online lectures and seminars to improve people’s understanding on mosquito control and synthetic biology as well as to clear misconceptions on them. We made a lecture in our school’s auditorium for parents in the school open day, with over 500 people reached. We have invited several doctors, teachers and professors in the field of biology to share their opinions, knowledge and experiences in our online workshop with over 400 participants. Here are some of the topics we have covered: “what GMO actually is”, “why the society need GMO”, “Introduction to mosquito-borne diseases”, and “Introduction to DNA and synthetic biology”.
Posters and Leaflets
We designed two activities about biology to attract the public and showed our posters about mosquito control and GMO to settlers in three different communities in Guangzhou and Foshan. During our promotion, we have explained the principles and proper ways of mosquito control, introduced GMO and answered many questions about the two main topics of ours. Our promotion in the three communities covered at least 300 people. Our team members went to the metro system in Guangzhou to distribute leaflets about mosquito control to the passengers, and we have placed the rest of the leaflets to the newsstands in each station after permition, therefore other passengers could take and read them.
