International public engagement
Due to the high population, East and South East Asia is the global source of influenza. In addition, rapid spread of Influenza is more serious in undeveloped country due to less developed system. Therefore, our project and the idea of synthetic biology should also be introduced to the publics in those countries. However, most underdeveloped countries don’t have the concept of synthetic biology. Among the region, Bangladesh is one of the most underdeveloped country affected by influenza and without the concept of synbio. Therefore, we first choose Bangladesh as the first targeted country.
Bangladesh
First ever synthetic biology event in Bangladesh (16 JUN 2017)
We cooperated with Bio Bangla, a community lab in Dhaka, to hold the first ever synthetic biology event in Bangladesh. We gave presentation about synthetic biology and our projects. About 40 students from 6 universities joined the event. The chairman of Microbiology department at Noakhali Science and Technology University- Firoz Ahmed and Prime minister a2i project consultant- Iran Khan also joined the event. After the event, we are very glad to notice that they will form the first iGEM team in Bangladesh in 2018. We therefore also provided advices in establishment of first iGEM team in Bangladesh.
iGEM Conference
The 4th iGEM Asia- Pacific Conference (8 - 14 AUG 2016)
We joined the iGEM Asia- Pacific Conference conducted in Tainan in August 2016, we have gained deep insights into perspectives of synthetic biology, from ethics to big data processing, via in-depth discussions with fellow iGEMers. The experience workshop and presentations with the 20 Asian iGEM teams also gives us inspirations in operating an iGEM team and conducting human practice.
We had got valuable advice in connecting ourselves to the public from Ana Sifuentes from iGEM headquarters. Professors gave us precious advice on our future planning and orientation and pointed out the practical difficulties and problems hiding inside our project.
- Click here for detailed evaluation report.
Pan-Pearl iGEM Teams Meeting (5 AUG 2017)
We attended and presented our project in the conference. We had exchanged ideas with other iGEM teams as well. Supervisors from other iGEM teams gave helpful advices for improvement of our project. We also gain more experience in presenting and answering questions, it was like a small rehearsal for Jamboree.
DIYBio Biosafety Sharing (11 AUG 2017)
DIYBio HK shared with us their safety protocol, biosafety practice in their lab as well as the recent situation and regulations on genetically modified organisms in Hong Kong. We gain precious inspirations from the talk on biosafety and we realized that regulations in Hong Kong need to be improved. Meeting with all other local iGEM teams, we had nice communications on difficulties we are facing respectively and gave each other suggestions.