Team:ColumbiaNYC/Engagement

Public & Professional Engagement

ThinkSTEAM


ThinkSTEAM is a non-profit organization with a mission to inspire and motivate girls by merging STEM and arts, thus enhancing critical, problem solving and communication skills. More info about ThinkSteam can be found on their website . We gave a presentation on the principles of synthetic biology, as well as our project and cloning techniques that were integral for our project. We also taught them about the concepts of transformation and selection, making plates, making and running a gel. Furthermore, we gave the girls a tour around the lab, emphasizing safety, and showing them how the Nanodrop machine, cold room, autoclave, and ultracentrifuge work.


HYPOTHEKids

HYPOTHEkids is an educational organization that offers summer program hosted in New York City to promote STEAM education among elementary school, middle school, and high school students. We worked with a branch in Harlem, consisting of elementary school and middle school students ages 4 through 11. We gave three different lectures on synthetic biology in this program, one to students ages 4 to 6, one to students ages 7 to 9, and one to students ages 10 to 11. For the students ages 4 to 6, we showed them an animation of cellular processes and specifically explained the portion regarding DNA synthesis, transcription, and translation in simple terms and a brief overview of synthetic biology. We then explained biological circuits to the students using real-life analogies of cause and effect. The students engaged in building circuits with Lego pieces, and they explained what each Lego piece represented in their circuit. We ended with a coloring activity made by the 2013 BGU Israel iGEM team. For the students ages 7 to 9, we showed them a BrainPop video about the central dogma. We explained synthetic biology, biological circuits, and we demonstrated gene knockdown with Jenga blocks, in that when critical genes are knocked down (or when critical Jenga blocks are removed), this makes a significant impact to the rest of the cells (the Jenga tower falls). For the students ages 10 to 11, we taught them about the DNA, RNA, and the central dogma in more detail, and we explained synthetic biology and our iGEM project. We gave the students an activity for them to write their initials using codons and cut out DNA bases to glue together the bases that make up these codons. This activity was adapted from the DNA name activity made by the 2013 BGU Israel iGEM team, using their DNA letter cut outs and codon table.

Synthetic Biology Initiative


Our team also partook in a collaboration to create and distribute synthetic biology postcards to educate the public during lectures. The synthetic biology lecture series is hosted by the Columbia University Synthetic Biology Initiative, which is a club that we created this year to foster science and advance the interest and public understanding of synthetic biology on our campus and the surrounding NYC community. Within the club, over fifty members are already working on creating synthetic biology podcasts, video series, and educational curriculum.


Club activities include:

  • Provide universal synthetic biology education for individuals at all levels of learning (middle school, high school, undergraduate, and beyond)
  • Develop consistent podcast discussing current topics in synthetic biology
  • Create Khan Academy style videos on YouTube channel for everyone to enjoy
  • Inviting speakers to come talk about biohacking
  • Brainstorm project ideas for iGEM through journal club
  • Provide professional development panels and networking sessions with upperclassmen
  • Offer lectures on various topics in synthetic biology

Poster Sessions

Throughout the summer, we presented our project in various poster sessions, including Columbia's Science Research Symposium (7/31) and Summer Research Symposium (9/27), as well as the ISMMS (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) Undergraduate Research Symposium (9/16). At the Mt.Sinai Undergraduate Symposium, we were awarded the "outstanding poster presentation" in the Cancer and Developmental Biology Track. All of these events were great opportunities to raise awareness of the world of synthetic biology and its applications, interact with the public, reach out to the community for input. The poster sessions allowed us to gauge public interest in our project over the course of the summer, providing us with valuable insight in its strengths and weaknesses, and how to move forward into producing a viable, functional and effective therapeutic.

Benji and Noah at the Mt.Sinai poster session.