On August 3, Nisa visited an after-school program for elementary school students in Indonesia. In line with iGEM NYUAD team’s mission this year, she spoke to 25 students about the importance of food and personal hygiene in preventing pathogenic E. coli infection. This workshop is part of the iGEM NYUAD team’s education and engagement efforts, demonstrating that the scope of iGEM NYUAD’s work includes not only developing a portable device to detect shiga-toxin producing E. coli in the lab, but also raising awareness of everyday hygienic practices, particularly in places where food safety remains a high concern.
Team:AshesiGhana/Engagement
The iGEM NYU Abu Dhabi presented our project during the Foundations of Science 1 & 2 and Foundations of Science 3 & 4 courses. Foundations of Science is a rigorous program that focuses on the integration of the physical and natural sciences (read more). These fundamental science courses are compulsory for all STEM majors in NYU Abu Dhabi, and throughout the years there has been a lot of debate if the engineers should take this course as they feel that studying biology cannot be applied for their major.
In order to establish the importance of interconnectedness of sciences and engineering, the iGEM NYU Abu Dhabi team described their project, presented its importance in countries with high numbers of street food poisoning and showed how biologist and engineers had to work together in order to incorporate LAMP technique with the device. The team explained how both engineers and biologist had to compromise and find a design and underlined how essential it was for engineers to be familiar with the basics of biology in order to achieve best results. Furthermore, the team presented the iGEM competition, what it aims for and what can be accomplished with an iGEM project.
After the presentation, several students approached the team and expressed the wish to participate in iGEM next year. Many of the students were engineers, who were excited to see how the knowledge they are obtaining in the Foundations of Science course can be applied and linked to their paths as engineers.
Few weeks after the presentations the instructors and professors contacted us expressing what a positive effect this presentation has done. The students have not only been more accepting of taking courses out of their major but they also started to notice more connections between their chosen majors and the material they are covering in the courses.
