Team:UiOslo Norway/Engagement

Engagement work

April 6th 2017 - Presented the project plan and work outline for an open audience at the Natural Sciences Students' Association of Oslo (Realistforeningen)

June 30th 2017 - Presented our ideas for the institute head of the Institute of Biosciences at UiO, as well as several experts in physics and molecular biology.

July 2017 - Had a feature of one of our team members in the newspaper Porsgrunn Dagblad, where he was talking about the project.

August 11th 2017 - Participated in a collaborative discussion between other iGEM teams on the subject of ethics and safety in our respective iGEM-project, as well as in synthetic biology in general.

Public presentations

As our project ventures into a fairly unexplored field, we had a fairly easy time gathering interest for our project. We held a multitude of public presentations for large audiences. We presented our work for several renowned experts in molecular biosciences, physics and microscopy on two occasions, which provided us with valuable feedback and advice on our project. We talked about our work for several large student groups; notably at Realistforeningen in front of interested students at April 6th, to new physics bachelor students and new bioscience master students at August 15th. We toured new physics students through our physics lab at Researcher Safari at August 17th, showing that studying natural sciences isn't just books and formulas, but also gives opportunities for practical work. On the 20th of October, we also got to present our project to the Norwegian Minister of Education as he was visiting the University, along with the leading university administration, which was a greatly successful endeavour.

We also made an effort to spread knowledge outside of academia. In this endeavour, we talked to startup expert company Inven2 to learn more about entrepreneurship and the possibilities of working further on our project post-iGEM. They were enthusiastic about the possibilities of the bio-laser, and wanted us to present our work at the Cutting Edge festival held in Oslo 29th of September. The festival is to celebrate innovation and science, bringing business and academia together, and spreading knowledge and ideas. We had a stand manned for the entire day, discussing the opportunities and potential of our project, while also being provided critical feedback from experts in the fields of bioscience, physics and commerce.

In addition, we joined an initiative from iGEM Uppsala and several to talk about ethics and potential dangers in regards to our projects. The result is published on youtube, and all involved parties learned much from the fruitful discussions. We also had a case about our project published in the newspaper Porsgrunn Dagblad, and another one in Brønnøysund avis, which helped us reach the wider public.

We have also been active on Facebook and Instagram, announcing events and sharing pictures. With more than 600 followers on Facebook, we've been able to reach a lot of people and spread our project further.