Throughout this year, our team granted an important part of our public engagement in developing fun community activities to popularize the project and empower young and old people. We wanted to intervene in different public events as well as scientific events to spread our message : Our planet needs us ! We therefore created entertaining, interactive and educative activities to raise awareness on microplastics’ pollution, spread iGEM values and inform about synthetic biology.

Printemps des Assos

We started our 2022 iGEM adventure by participating in a gathering of multiple associations of AIX MARSEILLE University, in March. This event gave us the opportunity to talk about the competition, how synthetic biology works, our upcoming project and interact with students from a variety of domains. We realized that our desire to work on microplastics’ pollution was well appreciated by a major part of the people we were able to meet.

JSM3

The Junior Scientists Microbiology Meeting of Marseille, in May, is a scientific forum created by a number of PhD students, that revolves around all the domains of microbiology and allows young scientists to meet other scientists. It was an enriching opportunity as we attended lectures given by young researchers and networked. It was a great chance to start talking about our aspiring project with scientists from the domain.

Pharo UE Oceans

In June, The European Commission, the South Region, the City of Marseille and Aix-Marseille University organized the event "Restore our ocean and waters by 2030" in connection with the EU Ocean Mission which aims to accelerate the transition to zero pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. This event was the first one where we could propose to the public our handmade activities. Our aim : Raise awareness on how polluted our Mediterranean Sea is and how impactful our actions are on the environment. To do this, four activities were available at our booth :

A remake of “Operation” with a shark edition for kids to collect plastics,
A pop quiz about recycling in France,
A mystery fish box where plastics could be found and then analyzed,
A timeline on the duration of degradation of some well known plastics.

Those interactive and playful activities were well received by the public and helped develop a consciousness on our daily pollution. At the end of those activities, we promoted our project to show that a solution exists. Interacting with younger generations is very important for us and represents an essential part of our public engagement because we strongly believe that educating our children is a great start to a brighter and less polluted future.

Delta Festival

This festival revolves around music, sport, art and for this 7th edition, our team had the chance to attend the event and meet different actors of the environment such as Greenpeace as well as companies like IADYS (innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Robotic) . It was a great opportunity to talk about our project to a variety of audiences. Indeed, we realized once again that a solution to marine pollution is needed and desired by the public. During this event, we also participated in a Clean Walk. The amount of waste of all kinds that was collected was a great way to bring our project into perspective and to make people aware of the quantity of plastics that we throw everyday on our beaches.

French Meet-Up

We were welcomed in Toulouse for this year's French Meet-Up in July, a large gathering of all the French iGEM teams. The different teams held stands to present their projects for the first time in front of researchers, students and industrialists, before a second presentation in front of a jury. Our team was able to discover the pink city thanks to a photo rally, followed by an evening with the other teams. This gathering allowed not only to establish strong links with the participants but also to train for the Great Jamboree. Communicating with other teams and professionals was very enriching and inspiring.

Biotechnologies Forum

In collaboration with Polytech Marseille, we were given the opportunity to attend the 23rd Biotechnologies Forum. Each year, this forum enables participants to exchange with experts on different fields of biotechnologies, and bring students and professionals together to interact and exchange. During two days, conferences, talks and meetings are held. This year the attention was put on restorative biotechnologies at the service of health. We had the chance to present our work in 30 minutes and answer questions. This was the perfect opportunity to talk about our finalized project, after the lab development during summer, and recruit new students for the next year.