Team:Northwestern/humanpractices/Guide to the future
Guide to the future
To gain a broader perspective of our research and it’s place in the world, we used tools from the iGEM Guide to the Future website. SYNERGENE has compiled a list of activities to make iGEMers around the world think about ways their project might influence society as a whole. These tools allowed our team to identify the stakeholders and debate the positive and negative outcomes that this therapeutic could bring forward.
Family Focus
We were also able to work with a local after school program and design a workshop that would introduce students of grades 3-5 to the idea of genetic engineering. Although the topic of genetic engineering can receive complex dimensions, by introducing real life examples and diving into the endless possibilities of the field, we were able to have a vivid discussion and help students develop a basic, but factual, idea of what genetic engineering means.
The benefits of working with a younger age group was that even if they did not fully grasp everything we talked about, we were able to spark an interest and create excitement about the limitless possibilities of synthetic biology.
In one activity, students used their imagination to draw what they would try to accomplish using synthetic biology tools. The end-result was very promising, showing good understanding of basic concepts.
