Team:SDU-Denmark/HP/Silver

Education & Public Engagement

- A Trip to the Future and Beyond!

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If you want change, look to the future! Such was the wording of our core philosophy. A philosophy that was carried out, by reaching out to the people of our society to ensure the engagement of the next generation, within the world of synthetic biology.
Ever since World War II, the West has seen an expansion and intensification of anti-scientific sentiment, which today primarily concern Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). We will for that reason explore GMO’s role in history, to see if a historical perspective will allow us reach a new understanding of these sentiments. You can read all about it here.

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A Historical Perspective on GMO

From Food Concerns to Sustainable Energy

When talking about the history of GMO, we have the rare privilege of choice, as depending on how you define GMO, One could potentially choose any historical period as their starting point. For instance, we could be examining the breeding of wolves to dogs, or simple agriculture, where the bad seeds are destroyed in favour of higher quality cropsRangel G. From Corgis to Corn: A Brief Look at the Long History of GMO Technology. Genetically Modified Organisms and Our Food. August 2015.
For the purpose of narrative, we will be starting our examination with the dawn of the 20^th century. A time in which stale and rotten food lead to health concerns. Through several years, the public was continuously made aware of health problems regarding food in the United States. This culminated in the 1906 statute:, which allowed the inspection and ban of products JP S. The 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcement. FDA History - Part I US Food and Drug Administration. 2013.. During the time leading up to this act, the public grew to appreciate items labeled as pure. A trend we can observe in most journalistic material from the time period O’Keefe TJ. The Alliance herald. : (Alliance, Box Butte County, Neb.) 1902-1922. T.J. O'Keefe; 1902.
This need for pure food naturally originated partly from several years of unsatisfactory food and health concerns JP S. The 1906 Food and Drugs Act and Its Enforcement. FDA History - Part I US Food and Drug Administration. 2013., and partly from a political fiction: The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair Sinclair U. The Jungle. New York: Grosset & Dunlap,; 1906 1906.. The readers became aware of unsanitary practices in the American food industry. Sinclair was considered a whistleblower, having exposed the practices of the food industry. After the act of 1906, we can observe a rise in concerns over the purity of food, which in turn lead to a focus on maintaining a certain standard in foods. Over time, this concern became the driving force behind the development of pesticides, and to a certain extent, GMO. With the introduction of these solutions to food purity, a new and opposite response could quickly be observed in the public. With pesticides and GMO, the public quickly grew concerned that food would be unnatural, and thus we can observe what is known as a reverse halo effect Konnikova M. The Psychology of Distrusting G.M.O.s. THE NEW YORKER. 2013.. A reverse halo effect is defined by the unconscious creation of a negative assumption based on a positive evaluation. In this case, the positive evaluation, would be the ensured purity and health benefits of GMO foods, where the negative assumption would be the concerns for unnaturalness.
So we detect a tendency in the public to follow a reverse halo effect, which is most often associated with GMO foods. The problem we face today, is the continuation of this reverse halo effect, where the public would receive any GMO device negatively, simply by association to the word GMO. So how do we change this dynamic between GMO and the public?
The conclusion we reached was that in order to change a tendency in public opinion, it was important to educate the coming generations on the possibilities of GMO. Another important aspect seemed to be a general perception of GMO as an unnatural element that would harm both humans and nature alike. As such, we wanted to illustrate how GMO could be used, not to harm nature, but to help lead it towards a more sustainable future. So, we set out to teach children of all ages about GMO in general, as well as about our own PowerLeaf, to show them that this concept, which is considered to be unnatural, could actually be used to help nature.

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Danish Science Festival

At the Danish Science Festival we hosted a workshop for kindergarteners, during which we taught them about synthetic biology, sustainability, the history of GMO, and bioethics. The children would in turn teach us as well, as they showed us the endless possibilities for bacteria designs, through the “Draw-a-Bacteria”-contest. This inspired us to reevaluate our initial idea.

School Project Interview with 6^th Graders

Following the Danish Science Festival, we were contacted by two enthusiastic 6^th graders, Bastian and Magnus. The two boys wanted to learn more about iGEM and GMO, which they intended to write about in a school project. They were curious to what range GMO could be used, and how we utilised it in our project, the PowerLeaf.

UNF Summer Camp

The UNF Summer Camp is an opportunity for high school students to show extra dedication towards science. We talked to some of the brightest young minds imaginable, all of whom aim to work in different fields of science in the future. At the summer camp, we held a presentation about our project, the iGEM competition, as well as how to handle and work with genes. We taught them how to assemble BioBricks and provided them with BioBricks for DNA assembly experiments, creating a ‘hands-on’ experience for these enthusiastic teenagers.
One of the high school students suggested that the Powerleaf should be able to rotate according to the sun, to ensure maximum exposure and outcome. We took this brilliant advice into consideration and contacted Robot Systems Engineer student, Oliver Klinggaard, who helped us with the potential implementation of a pan/tilt system. He provided us with his recent project report on the subject, as well as a description of the adjustments required for the implementation in our system, which you can find here.
Two students from the UNF Summer Camp thought the PowerLeaf was an interesting approach to sustainable energy, and they wanted to hear even more! So, they contacted us in late October, as they were interested to work on a project about green technology.

The Academy for Talented Youth

We hosted a workshop for the Academy for Talented Youth, an association for some of the most talented high school students in Denmark. During the workshop we invited the students into our laboratories, where they conducted a miniprep and a gel electrophoresis on bacteria containing our BioBricks. Additionally, we held a presentation and discussion about our project, with the dedicated students. We strongly believe in mutual communication and made sure to compile feedback, all of which was positive!

Presentations for the Local Schools

The local high schools, Mulernes Legatskole and Odense Tekniske Gymnasium, invited us to present our project, in addition to starting discussions with the students about GMO.
An 8^th grade class from the local public school, Odense Friskole, were invited to see our laboratory workspace. It was a challenge to successfully convey our project and the concept of synthetic biology in a way that would be easily understandable by 8^th graders, who have only recently been introduced to science. A challenge that we accepted and solved, by relaying the fundamentals in synthetic biology, e.g. the basics of a cell, DNA, and GMO.
From all of these presentations and interactions with younger individuals, we had a strong intuition that it had made an influence on their awareness of synthetic biology. This intuition was supported by the positive feedback provided by teachers and students. An awareness of how new scientific technologies can be a feasible solution to a possible energy crisis. Technologies such as synthetic biology, with endless capabilities to achieve efficacy, since no one knows what tomorrow brings. For more information about this read To Future iGEM Teams

Final Presentation at SDU-Denmark

The day before we travelled to Boston, we booked one of the big auditoriums at the University of Southern Denmark, for the final rehearsal of our jamboree presentation. We made sure to take note of all the feedback and tips we received, while also implementing these into our final presentation. This event was promoted on all the information screens at our university in order to attract a broad audience and increase the interest for iGEM. Thus, making it possible to reach a substantial amount of future applications for the SDU-iGEM team and ensure that the iGEM spirit will continue to prosper in the future!

Social Media

Social media is an easy way to impact a high number of people, so a strategy was concocted with the intention of reaching as many people as possible with our outreach. Our strategy yielded marvellous results, amongst which was a video on our project, that reached viewers equal to 16% of our hometown’s population, along with becoming the second most seen bulletin of the year from University of Southern Denmark. They have also asked us to film our experiences at the Jamboree, which will feature on the homepage of the student’ initiative BetonTV. Several articles were written about our project in local newspapers, one was even featured in the saturday special.
You can read all about our social media strategy and results here. The commercial can be seen right here:

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Social Media Report

"I hate social media. I have Twitter, just so I can tell people what to buy.”

Louis C. K.

Introduction

As part of our iGEM project we wanted to raise awareness on synthetic biology. As such it seemed beneficial to have a successful social media strategy. The motivation for such a strategy came from the knowledge that social media in general has a large influence on people, especially the younger generation. Opportunities for green marketing: young consumers. Social Media Influencing Green Buying

Our Strategy

The design of our logo consisting of a light font and a picture of a leaf combined with an electrical plug, was determined in the start of April. We sought to make a simple logo that showed the essence of our project, The PowerLeaf, not only in name but in brand as well.
During spring we narrowed down the relevant hashtags of our Twitter and Instagram to #science, #igem, #sdu, #gmo, and #forsksdu. These hashtags were used at relevant occasions and generally helped expanding our reach on social media. A few times we even used a couple of silly hashtags like #adventuretime and #lifechoices when we found it appropriate.
A complete relaunch of our social media platforms was made in the start of April. One of the changes we made was the setup of the Facebook page and Twitter account, that we changed to resemble an enterprise.

Results

Looking at Figure 1 we see the number of followers on our Facebook page throughout the year. There is a sharp increase around the start of April, this correlate nicely with the relaunch of our social media. Since we started using the Facebook page on March 1^st, we have seen an increase of followers on 44%.
Figure 2 shows the number of unique interactions with our Facebook posts each day. Some posts gained around 200 interactions per day, while the highest amount of interactions per day was seen at end of April. This high amount of interactions correlates with us being at the Danish Science Festival, where we inoculated bacteria from the fingers of the attendants on agar plates. The photo gallery of these plates was widely shared on our Facebook page, and it probably was the reason for the rise in amounts of interactions.
During the summer, we realised that an increasing fraction of our followers on Facebook were non-Danish speakers. Therefore, we set out to analyse the distribution of first languages among our followers seen in Figure 3, which showed that one in three of our followers were not speaking Danish as their first language. This data led to us switching the language used in our Facebook posts from Danish to English.

Figure 1. Number of followers on our Facebook page throughout the year.

Figure 2. Unique interactions per day on our Facebook page.

Figure 3. Distribution of first language among our followers

On the 8^th of September a commercial about our project aired on the website and Facebook page of the University of Southern Denmark. We made this commercial in collaboration with the communications department of the University of Southern Denmark, specifically a producer named Anders Boe. It was seen 27,526 times, which is equivalent to 16% of our hometowns population. The click-through rate was around 10%, which is much greater than the average rate of videos on their Facebook page. The commercial led to random people, including doctors on the hospital of Odense, asking team members about the project and about GMO in general. With all this in mind it seems fair to state that the commercial was a smash hit of our human outreach and our engagement in the social media. In combination with our easily recognisable logo and our human outreach initiatives, we have been using our social media as a platform to show interest in synthetic biology and for sharing our work.
After seeing the commercial a local newspaper reached out to us to bring an interview in their Saturday special Newspaper article from Fyens.dk (Danish). In collaboration with the student media RUST and Beton TV we have been featured in their magazine and a video of our attendance in Boston will be shown on their Facebook page briefly after our return. This is done to ensure an awareness of the iGEM competition among the students on the University of Southern Denmark. We hope this will inspire a lot of students to apply for the iGEM team next year, since it is a hallmark of the SDU-Denmark team to be interdisciplinary.
The effort put into our social media strategy and our goal of following it has paid off. Social media has shaped our outreach and made it possible for us to talk about iGEM and our project to people we did not know. Several times our outreach has led us to public discussion of GMO and solar panels due to persons contacting us, wanting to know more.

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