Public Engagement

Antibiotic resistant bacteria is an increasing global problem and will affect every aspect of daily life - from medical treatment to food production. iGEM NTNU Trondheim wanted to raise awareness and share knowledge about phage therapy as a potential solution to antibiotics through lectures, article in GENialt, Researcher's night and social media.

Lecture at the Medicine and Health Library

Jenny with stuffed bacteria.

We had a lecture at the Medicine and Health Library about our project. In advance, the communication advisor, Anja Johansen, had put up an mini exhibition about resistant bacteria and bacteriophages, which included literature, poster about iGEM and the team, and "giant bacteria" (stuffed animals). Through the presentation we were able to inform people about antibiotic resistant bacteria, bacteriophages and the concept of "Phage age". After the talk people were free to ask questions or just talk to us. A dermatologist was so impressed by our project, and asked us kindly to take a picture and post it on Twitter.

Lecture at the Department of Biotechnology and Food Science

Peter D. explaining chemostat setup.

We held a presentation at the Department of Biotechnology and Food Science, where professors, researchers and PhD-students were present. There was an interesting discussion afterwards, with many good questions from the audience.

Researcher's night

Researcher's night is arranged each year since 2005 at NTNU and attracts more than 1200 high school students. It aims to present reseach, natural science and technology in an fun and interactive way with more than 30 stands and lectures. On Friday 29th of September we joined Researcher's night and conveyed our research by having different stand-activities, such as Kahoot (questions) about our project and synthetic biology. We used legobricks to explain how DNA editing works, and stuffed animals to illustrate how a virus attacks a bacterium. We also used small petri dishes containing dessert gel, to explain how we grow bacteria in the lab. The most exciting part with this was that the students could eat the gel, which made them curious and wanted to hear more about us. All in all, it was a great night with engaged and interested teenagers.

Peter H, Marta and Sheida at stand during the Researcher's Night event.

GENialt interview and article

Article in GENialt about our project.

Marianna was interviwed in GENialt, the journal published by the Norwegian Biotechnology advisory board, about our project and iGEM. GENialt focuses on ethical and social aspects on the application of modern biotechnology.

The interview can be found here (in Norwegian).

Social media

Social media is an easy way to connect with people outside the scientific community. Through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter we shared our failures and successes, and people got to know the NTNU Trondheim team. Social media were also an important platform to promote our sponsors for their attribution.

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Facebook

The iGEM NTNU 2017 Facebook page gained more than 260 likes. Below is a screen shot of our Facebook page and a selection of pictures shared during the summer.

Screenshot of facebook page.

Instagram

On instagram we shared 54 posts with more than 180 followers, where the majority was iGEM teams from all over the world. This was a great way to interact with other iGEM teams. Below is a screen shot of our instagram account.

Screenshot of instagram page.

Twitter

We inherited the Twitter account from previously iGEM NTNU teams. On twitter we had more than 350 followers that we shared our progress with. Twitter gave us the opportunity to follow companies, scientists and other iGEM teams. Below is a screenshot of our Twitter page.