Difference between revisions of "Team:Cornell/Engagement"

The Great NY State Fair

An American tradition of over 175 years. An annual attendance of over a million visitors. All these factors made the Great New York State Fair, a thirteen day celebration of New York agriculture, entertainment, and technology, the perfect place for Cornell iGEM to reach out to a large and receptive audience. Our aim was to bolster the fun and festivity by exhibiting our hydroponics synthetic biology application, and discussing the myriad of opinions surrounding genetic engineering. Situated at the New York 4H building, we joined a wide range of education and technology exhibits targeting youth of all ages as well as parents. In our time there, we would enthusiastically break the ice by asking fairgoers a simple question, “What does synthetic biology mean to you?” We encountered many families who had no idea what that meant. But by discussing and engaging their curiosity with activities from Building with Biology that illustrated synthetic biology as a way to put different pieces together to solve a problem, we were able to describe the essence of synthetic biology. Afterwards we asked them to participate in our photo campaign, called Humans of SynBio. It was not always consensus. During some of our conversations, we had fairgoers who shared that genetic engineering were dangerous for human health. Rather than immediately refute them, we listened and facilitated dialogue to resolve misconceptions and hear these various viewpoints. See “Actively Discussing the Issues” below for further discussion.