This year, our team, HBUT-China, focused on developing a biological approach to detecting nickel ions as a heavy metal contaminant in the natural environment. Thus it was important for us to know the public opinion about nickel pollution. We also took the responsibility to advocate for the idea of environmental protection, and educate students about synthetic biology. Therefore, we think we are qualified for the Human Practices Silver Medal.

On OCT 12 and OCT 13, 2017, we made an exhibition at Hubei University of Technology. We introduced our project and the iGEM competition to people who came and wanted to know about our activities. We talked to them about Nickel pollution and told them the importance of protecting the environment. We also created a QQ chat group for the iGEM competition, and we put the QQ group number on the exhibition so that people interested in our project and the iGEM competition could join in the group and discuss questions.

OCT 13, 2017, was not an ordinary day; iGEM HBUT-China had successfully accomplished our recruitment mission for 2018's team. At that time, our team consisted of 16 members from different faculties, such as the School of Biological Engineering and Food Science, the School of Art and Design, the School of Scientists, and others, but we realized that it would not be enough for next year's team. We showed them our project and presented the iGEM competition through a PPT and our explanations. As a result, we found and recruited more people with hidden potential to join for next year. This formed our new team which has a greater diversity of cross-disciplinary professions than our present team.

We created an official WeChat account to spread knowledge about synthetic biology and the iGEM competition, and to share moments of our work throughout our project. So far, we have attracted hundreds of subscribers. So we think we have fulfilled our goal of popularizing synthetic biology and the iGEM competition, and introducing our project to raise people’s awareness of pollution and the importance of protecting the environment.

We took a poll to find out people’s opinion about heavy metal pollution. There were 140 people who took part in the questionnaire. Through this questionnaire, we found that people’s awareness to Nickel pollution was very low. And only a few people knew about biological methods to detect metal pollution. So now we think it is important for us to apply our project to daily life.