Team:CCA San Diego/HP/Silver

iGEM Summer Camp

Our Outreach team simultaneously held two one-week long summer camps in both genetics & environmental science and physics for elementary to middle school students. We taught the students concepts pertinent to everyday lab work: reinforced with hands on activities, experiments, and projects. Furthermore, we taught the students fundamental biotechnology techniques, such as micropipetting, gel electrophoresis, serial dilution, growing bacteria in petri dishes, and PCR. In the physics camp we delved into concepts, such as energy, forces, light, heat, and kinetics. As a result of this camp we increased publicity of our team, project, and the field of synthetic biology as well as increasing exposure to advanced biotechnology techniques for younger students who did not have this opportunity at their own schools. We expand more about our camp and other education events under the Education & Public Engagement page.

Community Survey

After one of our library STEM day events, several members of our team surveyed local community members in a Cardiff-by-the-sea market area on their opinions/pre-existing knowledge about genetic engineering. This opened a lot of interesting conversations such as discussions of the general public perception of controversial topics such as GMOs, or sparking interest in the future Synthetic Biology holds. Coincidentally when we were talking to many people within the market area we met a man whose job was to clean oil spills (he talked about the majority of techniques used, such as the use of sponges) and from there we were more eager on meeting with companies and hear how our project could be directly implemented or would better be appreciated by someone in the field.

iGEM STEM Days

Cardiff-by-the-Sea Library

We set up stations; they were lab safety, extracting DNA from strawberries, DNA modeling, and a visual demonstration of our project that included an oil presentation and oil over water demonstration (teaching a bit of chemistry background). We received a myriad of positive feedback: "I know I want to be a scientist and this just shows how much fun science is". It was so rewarding that we could inspire future young scientists! More on the Education and Public Engagement Page.

Torrey Hills Elementary School

At this assembly with over 100 6th grade students from Torrey Hills elementary we directed an interactive assembly teaching students about the central dogma with hands on activities and demonstrations. We ultimately transitioned to talk about the application of synthetic biology in this process and specifically our project's potentials.

Reuben H Fleet Science Center

In a collaboration with the Tinkerer’s Club, at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, an event that allows young children to “tinker” with science and engineering, we talked about synthetic biology and the detrimental effect of oil spills on the environment to any children and adults who were interested. The children who stopped by our tables are all interested in science, and we explained to them what synthetic biology is and what they can do to further understand it. At the first table, we talked about safety and what needs to be done in a lab to be cautious. For example, we had the kids identify what aspects of the iGEM lab safety image is. We also explained some aspects of laboratory procedure and how important it is to calculate exact values of different substances. At another table, we allowed children to dip a bird feather into some oil, so that they could see how bird’s body parts are restricted when they are surrounded by crude oil. In addition, we had two stations where we talked about DNA and its structure: the matching game station and the DNA modelling station. At the matching game station, we had children match up base pairs to understand the components of DNA. At the DNA modelling station, we let children build a double helix with toothpicks and marshmallows.

Beach Clean-Up Day

A group of our team members and friends went to the Torrey Pines Beach and spent an afternoon picking up trash in an effort to make our San Diegan beach even more beautiful and clean for the public.This was a great event to bring everyone together and enjoy our summer day together We obtained almost 100 pounds of trash and received compliments and questions about our iGEM team and the iGEM competition. We actually learned a lot about the major pollutants of the beaches just by picking up trash that day. As expected we found that most trash was small plastics or plastic bottles.

email igemcca@gmail.com Canyon Crest Academy iGEM 2017 CC;