Public Engagement

Postcards

One of the many brilliant parts about iGEM is that besides being in the lab you get to do outreach projects. Considering the impact of your work, further consequences and safety is an essential part of scientific work.

At this point in time the phrase “synthetic biology” often invokes the image of mad scientists trying to play god or destroying our beloved nature. When people think about genetic engineering they see spooky laboratories and some form of witchery being done behind closed doors. [SOURCE] This makes outreach an inevitable part of iGEM. We think that iGEM gives us, young students from all over the world, the opportunity to change this image! Without any doubt risks and safety have to be considered, and this is another big part of iGEM as each team has to fill out safety forms and be considerate about their work.
But right now people are still doubting all the advantages of genetic engineering. We thought it might be a great idea if as many teams as possible joined forces and created a simple thing which reaches a big community.

This is where our postcards fit in. We wrote to a whole lot of teams to get them to take part and tried to get as many teams on board as possible. Fortunately, many teams were as enthusiastic about this as we were!

Last year’s iGEM Team Duesseldorf started a postcard campaign which included seven german teams and the postcards were a great success. This year we wanted to create an even bigger campaign. At first we wanted it to be all over Europe, but after we put our campaign up on the collaboration page of iGEM, teams from all over the world asked us if they could join. We were quite surprised but loved the idea of a worldwide postcard campaign. In total, 28 teams took part in the campaign. Each team designed their own postcard with an image relating to synthetic biology in general or even their own project. On the back of the postcards you could often find a little text explaining the front of the card.

As we were the ones that started and organized this campaign, all teams sent us their postcards. So in the time it took all the cards to arrive our room was transformed into a post office and we became a regular at the actual post office to collect all the little presents we received. Each time a package of postcards arrived it felt like opening a present as we were all excited about how the different postcards would look. Oftentimes there even was a little treat for us, like sweets or a letter, contained in the boxes. These really made our days.
A few teams wanted to participate but couldn’t afford printing and sending the postcards, so we offered to print their designs from our own funds so they could be a part of this campaign.
After a few weeks the time finally came when all postcards had arrived. So we transformed our room into a Christmas workshop and started packing boxes, including all the different postcards we received, and sent them to all participating teams.

Afterwards all the postcards could be shared at public events. We distributed them in the Old town of Duesseldorf and at our synthetic biology meetup in the house of the university.

We want to thank all participating teams for making this postcard campaign as great as it is. We really appreciate all of your work and are proud that all these teams joined forces to bring synthetic biology closer to the public!

• Aachen
• Aalto-Helsinki
• Aix-Marseille
• Bielefeld-CeBiTec
• UBonn_HBRS
• ColumbiaNYC
• TU_Darmstadt
• TU_Dresden
• ECUST
• TU-Eindhoven
• Franconia
• Greece
• Groningen
• Hamburg
• Heidelberg
• UNIFI
• Northweastern
• Abu_Dhabi
• Potsdam
• RPI_Troy_NY
• Sydney_Australia
• INSA-UPS_France
• Tuebingen
• Uppsala
• Valencia_UPV
• Utrecht
• Wageningen_UR

Karl von Frisch award ceremony

On the 29th June we were invited to give a presentation to pupils at the Karl-von-Frisch-award ceremony. The Karl-von-Frisch-prize was awarded by vBio (a german biology association) to high-school students with outstanding performance in biology. The ceremony was held in the Max Planck Institute in Dortmund. To inform the pupils about different job and research opportunities in sciences, Dr. Johann Jarzombek held a talk about the research in the Max Planck Institute in Dortmund and Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Peter Proksch from our university in Düsseldorf talked about drugs from the ocean. Following some researchers from the Max Planck Institute offered guided tours through some institutes. We used this event to convince people to study science and of course to be part of a future iGEM team. One of the pupils is now studying biochemistry in Düsseldorf.