Team:SJTU-Software/Engagement
Engagement
Our team mainly focuses on two parts in the Education and Public Engagement part. For one part, we dedicated to inspire students on Synthetic Biology. Since we found that there were many students, even university students, who still considered biology as it was like on their high school textbooks, it is necessary to impart new concepts and technology of biology to them. To achieve this goal, we used the support education chance and introduced synthetic biology to high school students in Gansu province, as well as freshmen in SJTU. For another, to help students learn more about synthetic biology and iGEM, we gave a report on synthetic biology and presented our project, which attracted around one hundred freshmen. Besides, we know that synthetic biology is developing rapidly and in the key stage of industrialization. Thus we investigated three biology companies of different orientations, which will be described in our Golden Human Practice in detail. Although one team’s force and resource is limited, we exploited every chance available to get public involved in our project to make this newly arising subject be accessible to the society.
Inspire Students on Synthetic Biology
On the school Open Day, we applied for a booth to hang our poster and introduce projects of SJTU-Software team every year since it established. We received enthusiastic response from especially freshmen, many of whom barely heard of synthetic biology before.
During summer vacation, one of our team members, Chenyi Xie went to Wang Zhai village, Gansu Province in west China to support education there. She set up a course on biology to the high school students there, and also popularized the knowledge of synthetic biology to them, since most of them didn’t know there is such a subject existing.
We found that the conception of biology subject was still antiquated in some people’s mind, so through these activities, we hope to give students a clue on different concepts about biology and moreover, raise their interests in exploring synthetic biology.
Present IGEM in campus
In desire of raising more students and faculty’s awareness of synthetic biology and IGEM, our team elaborately prepared a comprehensive and insightful presentation to introduce people with the competition, our team’s project, as well as the status quo and prospect of synthetic biology industry in this September.
Through these colorful and meaningful human practice activities, we harvested not only the communications and friendships among iGEM teams, but also the tight collaborations rooted in these friendships. We managed to understand how innovative ideas in synthetic biotechnology sprouted and how these ideas going to influence the subject, and even the world.
