Human Practices were an essential component in the development of our project. The work that we accomplished this year varied in many aspects. We conducted many sessions on how synthetic biology could change our view of life and science, especially among school children and college students. We had an active interaction with the community in order to educate the public about synthetic biology and the ethical issues in synthetic biology.
We have also ventured into policy-making by creating a GMM legislation proposal to help advance the laws and regulations of GMMs around the world.
Apart from this, we took our knowledge to the grassroots by conducting educational programs in the Hindi language to teach younger generations in rural areas about science, engineering, and biology.
Safety and security risks were also assessed by us. We actively considered how our project will affect our environment and the public perception by conducting surveys and interactions.
Being a more of a foundational advancement project in the field of synthetic biology the impact over the society was not very straightforward, however, it was more concerned with the present-day research development in multiple disciplines. We therefore integrated human practice considerations into the design and execution of our project by interacting with professors and researchers from multiple disciplines to know how our project poses to be a potential application in their respective fields and to be an integral element to solve scientific challenges for years to come and to better understand their needs and use these findings to influence our team decisions.
The main aim we had before going out and spreading awareness about the field of synthetic biology was to be able to make a significant change in how people around us perceive Synthetic Biology. We really wanted to present a perspective to all of these impressionable minds around us that fills them with a passion for this field, alongside presenting it as a lucrative career option for them in a monetary sense. The details of our initiative can be viewed on the given link:
https://2017.igem.org/Team:IIT_Delhi/Engagement
To get a better idea of how can we improve and move ahead with our project, we first set out to talk to some of the researchers and professors of various departments, both inside our institute and outside. A summary of the talk that we had can be viewed on the following link:
https://2017.igem.org/Team:IIT_Delhi/HP/Gold_Integrated/Collaborations
Our collaborations this year have proved to be really successful and fruitful for us. This year,we collaborated with iGEM Berlin, iGEM Manchester and iGEM Glasgow. Not only did we collaborate with other iGEM teams to improve our project, we were also involved in mentoring iGEM IISER Mohali team this year around. It was hugely fulfilling for us to work with all these teams despite being so distant from each other. Please click here to move to the collaboration page:
https://2017.igem.org/Team:IIT_Delhi/Collaborations
iGEM IIT Delhi follows a high standard of safe and responsible biological engineering. We completely understand that we are responsible for living up to the trust placed in us to design, build, and share biological devices safely. Please click here to move to the Safety page: https://2017.igem.org/Team:IIT_Delhi/Safety
