Education & Public Engagement

We wanted to show that it is possible to talk about biology, science in general and ethics with people from all ages and with different knowledge. We articulated our outreach strategy around three actions: discover, practice and discuss, to empower citizens or future citizens about their capability of thinking and acting on science. These three milestones are essential for us to give people a better understanding of the current challenges of science in the society.

Discover

The first question to be asked to popularise biology is “how to reach people?”

In order to make synthetic biology accessible to a wider audience, we had to adapt our speeches and supports to different people we have met. We had to find (workshops, card game...) to engage a young or non-scientific public in learning about different fields of biology.

Practice

One of the most important thing in science is scientific methods and experiments. In order to give a better understanding of the globality of the scientific work, we thought it was a good idea to make people do lab experiments. Moreover, practising often results in scientific and ethical questioning.

Discuss

Our biggest challenge is to open up the debate about synthetic biology, by bringing forward major scientific breakthrough but also showing that there is a need to think about ethical and technical limits. We want to address some controversial topics with the public such as limits and potentials of synthetic biology, ethics in science, GMOs legislation…

Exposciences

We took part to “Exposciences” which is a scientific festival that took place on the 30th and 31th of May in Toulouse. This festival highlights youth projects by enabling them to present what they have done in relation with sciences, techniques and environnement. It is an occasion to share, to talk about and to encourage scientific initiatives. During this event we made children extract banana DNA thanks to simple ingredients that they can find in their kitchen. We also discussed with them about microorganisms thanks to paper fortune teller and this support led them to be curious on the microscopic world around them. As a mixed team, we tried during our interactions to encourage girls to participate as much as boys so that they gain confidence in themselves and in what they are capable of. This exposure was a good opportunity to get in touch with a public encline to hear more about our project, and to introduce our strategy for the first time. Furthermore this event was a good way for us to test our survey about cholera to measure the level of knowledge that the public has on this matter and to raise awareness concerning this disease.

School Education

We’ve been involved in schools classes, with children between the age of 7 and 11 years old in elementary schools.

The main goals of these interventions were the discovery of biology and research at school with two workshops : Microorganisms and their environment and growth of microorganisms on a Petri dish.

Our motivation was to share our passion and knowledge about biology and to raise curiosity of the pupils about microorganisms. We were also very interested in seeing what representation children have on microorganisms, helping them improving their knowledge about microorganisms and discussing about benefits and risks of microorganisms on our health.

We worked with Mrs. Matricon, Mrs Bach and Mrs. Durand, respectively teachers at “Lakanal” and “Patte d’Oie” schools in Toulouse.

High school lab

The everyday work of scientists in their lab can be hard to picture for high schoolers because it can be quite different from what they normally do in class. Biotechnologies, synthetic biology and lab safety aren’t usually pointed out in a general science class of a French high schooler. Moreover, we wanted to show developing experimental strategies is an important part of the work of researchers, technicians and engineers, and is the foundation of every scientific reasoning. That’s why we intervened in a high school to do a practical exercise with them, in addition to introducing our project as an example of a synthetic biology application. As university and engineering school students, we also thought we could share our academic background with them and maybe inspire them to pursue a scientific career.

Card game

While doing several interventions in schools is in our opinion clearly a nice way for pupils to ‘learn by doing’, we thought is was also a good idea to bring scientific knowledge outside of the classroom. That’s why we came up with the idea of creating a strategy card game about biology. With this game, we are hoping to draw attention to the hidden world of microorganisms and make it visible elsewhere than on the bench of a scientist or inside a biology student’s notebook. Instead of making biology facts an opportunity to create a game, we really wanted to integrate ours in an educational approach and took the game as a nice way to talk about our field of study. Many games already exist on the subject (Strain, Gusty, Bacteria Combat, Healing Blade, …) but they are mainly about antibiotics resistance whereas we wanted to bring something new by presenting some biotechnology notions of DNA and plasmids.

The card game was indeed designed to get people to understand microbiology and synthetic biology by a playful approach. It is meant to be accessible to a large audience. We created this card game in collaboration with game design students to get an attractive product we can share with as many people as possible. They also gave us a unique point of view by being both insiders of the game conception and having no advanced education in science. We thus tested it gradually with the help of scientists and general public to improve the gameplay so that it can be both fun and scientifically accurate.

We are aware that our game can raise interrogations about the genetic engineering of living organisms, as the player acts as a bacteria colony attacking others and can grow in strength by integrating plasmids. The main goal of our card game is to provide basic knowledge and vocabulary about biology to a young or a general audience so that they can later form an opinion for themselves. We therefore hope that this way we would succeed in engaging a discussion about science in society, and unleash the player’s curiosity about microbiology.

Researcher's night

This european event aims at sharing the state of the art research in multiple fields of science by interactive approaches to encourage the general public to get interest in science, to gain a bit of knowledge and hopefully get enthusiastic about today’s crucial stakes. We tried to design a workshop to engage a discussion about the year’s theme (Impossible) to approach ethical aspects of biotechnologies in a clear and understandable way. We also wanted to confront our project to a large public, so we can have a feedback about their thoughts on the synthetic biological approach and the use of GMOs.

Campus exhibitions

We realised that students of the scientific campus are not aware of iGEM-Toulouse projects, and in general of synthetic biology issues. So we organised exhibitions at INSA-Toulouse and Université Paul Sabatier library to highlight former iGEM-Toulouse project and potential of synthetic biology. In order to make iGEM project understandable for all scientist student (and not only for biologists), we redesigned posters of previous project E. calculus, SubtiTree, ApiColi, Paleotilis, and of our project Croc’n Cholera.

Conference

After working during several months on synthetic biology for our iGEM project, we needed to organize an event to present our work and the one achieved by the previous iGEM teams. We also wanted to have an exchange of opinions with people who possibly have different values and considerations than us. The intended public was mainly composed of the Paul Sabatier university and INSA Toulouse students, two of the schools we are intending.