Human Practices is a field as important as the project itself. Thinking about the possible impacts your project might have on the world and engaging with the public to establish a well informed public understanding are key features of succesful scientific progress.
Our crowdfunding project was born out of necessity for acquiring funds but it also served as a main contributor to bring synthetic biology closer to the public attention in an easy and understandable way.
For our project, we needed a lot of money. We asked loads of big companies to sponsor us; we even sold handmade burgers in front of the cafeteria. Still, in the beginning of our project we could not convince many sponsors to support us so we decided to start a crowdfunding campaign and even filmed a video about our roughly sketched project idea.
A big thanks to Max, a student of Filmuniversität Babelsberg, whose help eventually lead to this fantastic result:
Recording the video was quite difficult (for 3 minutes we needed a whole day) but also fun and great for team building. We also had to write texts and propagate our campaign. In the end, we collected an unbelievable total of 1.820€. This money helps us to present our results in Boston at this year’s Giant Jamboree.
The big laboratory exhibition was an event for scientists and interested people alike and therefore helped exposing synthetic biology to the public.
On June 22, 2017, the LAB-SUPPLY exposition took place in the ESTREL Convention Center in Berlin, a chance our team could not miss. This regional trade fair for instrumental analytics, laboratory technology, laboratory chemicals, and biotechnology attracted more than 900 visitors (among them our iGEM team).
We got the chance to hear presentations about the newest innovations in the field of lab technology as well as lectures from a few equipment manufacturers.
Furthermore, the visit was an opportunity to directly get in touch with the companies to promote the iGEM competition and our team. For instance, we gained the support of companies like eppendorf, OMNILAB and LABOR PRAXIS. To sum up, the convention gave the visitors the chance to gain information from the trade exhibition by around 100 producers coming from lab- and analytic technique, to listen to lectures about the newest trends concerning the application technique in the laboratory, and also to gather tips for the daily work in the laboratory.
The Potsdam day of science was an excellent way for promoting our project, exchanging ideas with other scientists and having lots of fun!
At our booth, we showed which products include or will be produced by gene modified organisms. Many people do not know what gene modification is or that every organism and every cell contains DNA. We tried to bring the synthetic biology closer to women, men and children.
We also isolated the DNA from bananas together with children. They were so excited to see the whole genetic information, since every cell includes it. DNA is everywhere but you cant "touch" it, thereby it was even more interesting for the small explorers.
Presenting our project at schools is a very straightforward example of human practices. The pupils were excited to get a deeper insight into the actual process of scientific research and we might even convinced some to look for a degree in science themselves.
An important assignment of iGEM is to get in touch with non-scientific people, to inform them about our ideas of the competition and synthetic biology in general. Therefor, we asked around and then had the chance to visit two grammar schools, in Brandenburg and in Saxony. We gave presentations about synthetic biology and biotechnology in general and also explained our projects and experiences in the lab. Incidentally, we talked about our studies in Potsdam and scientific work. We ended with a discussion about the pros and cons of genetic engineering, in which the whole group took part. Students as well as the teachers were interested in the topic and asked a lot of questions. We also used the chance to give away the postcards that were sent to us by iGEM Düsseldorf-Cologne.
Ignorance and misunderstanding are always big dangers to science. The march for science was a world event to show the importance of scientific research in solving current world problems.
KLAS is a great way for us to interact with the society and look at synthetic biology from different perspectives.
KLAS (Knowledge Link through Art and Science) is an interdisciplinary Artist in Residence program focused on creating a connection between synthetic biology and art. It was founded at the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm near our campus.
The project aims at informing the public about advancements and ethics questions in synthetic biology whilst combining these topics with arts installations in regular workshops and panels. We got in contact with Dr. Rodrigo Perez-Garcia, member of the organisational team for KLAS and also talked with one of the artists residing at the MPI at that time (he’s from Brazil and plans on storing music via DNA in E.coli!).
There will be a workshop at the 27th and 28th of November, where we will be holding a short talk about our view about synthetic biology and how we experienced working in science for the first time and how that differs from the general public’s view on how science works.
