Team:Toronto/Engagement
Engagement
Our community outreach consisted of three major projects over the course of the summer.
Podcast
Our first project was a six-episode podcast on synthetic biology targeted towards an audience with little knowledge of the field. We tied each episode to a discipline that is intertwined with synthetic biology to help understand how the discipline works within a wider context. These episodes were focused on the arts, business, engineering and ethics, with a collaboration episode with other iGEM teams, and an interview with Dr. Petri Lahtvee from the Tartu University. The episodes were created in a manner by which they could be easily understood by someone with almost no knowledge of the area. Each episode features definitions of key terms and comprehensive discussion. The purpose of creating the episode in this way to widen the scope of what most would think to discuss in relation to synthetic biology. Those who participated in the podcasts are knowledgeable in their fields and have a significant understanding of their field and how it may relate to key issues in synthetic biology.
Icon-a-thon
The second project was our Icon-a-thon event, which aimed to bring together artists and scientists in the general community. The purpose of the event was to create a larger repository of icons for synthetic biology. Recognizing the lack of clear and engaging icons we reached out to artists and scientists for an afternoon of drawing and discussion.
Another important aspect of the event was the actual working of artists and scientists together. We hoped to build a bridge between two fields that are generally considered at odds. In closing this gap more progress can be made in the future. We recognized the important contributions arts can make to sciences and vice versa, these contributions were evident during the event. Those who came discussed ideas and concepts, drafted icons had general discussions about the importance of collaboration in science. After the event our team voted on the three best icons and those winners received prizes for their contributions. The winning icons were Central Dogma, ATP Synthase and Quorum Sensing.
Bioinformatics Workshop
Our third project was a synthetic biology workshop aimed at high school students and first year university students with little to no knowledge of coding or synthetic biology. The event was held from nine am to five pm with the first half of the day focused extensively on the basics of coding, with an emphasis towards applications in bioinformatics. Those who participated were able to increase their skills in coding led by one of our team leads; who has extensive experience in the area.
The second half of the day we devoted to testing the student’s skills in a series of games and lessons in smaller groups. We had bioinformatics games, a genetic circuit design game and discussions on the ethics of gene editing and gene drives. The students learned about our 2017 project while improving their discussion and analysis skills of key important issues at the forefront of gene editing. At the end of the rotations the group who excelled the best in the games received a 3D printed iGEM plaque.
References
- Canadian Biosafety Standards and Guidelines - https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/canadian-biosafety-standards-guidelines.html
- Biosafety Team in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety - https://ehs.utoronto.ca/our-services/biosafety/
- NIH Guidelines - https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/laboratory-biosafety-biosecurity/pathogen-safety-data-sheets-risk-assessment.html
- iGEM Risk Groups - https://2017.igem.org/Safety/Risk_Groups
