Dear reader,

Education is an often-overlooked part of scientific research. Overworked teachers are not appreciated as much as they should be for the work they deliver. Many amazing researchers would not have achieved their goals had they not had amazing teachers in their developing years. We therefore decided at Bio-Brussels that quality education would be one of our core values.

Way too often are students directly or indirectly encouraged to learn the subject matter by heart without even understanding the concept. We think that it is more important that students develop the insight and competences to solve problems using the appropriate tools. That is why we always implemented an interactive and playful way of teaching in all our educational activities. The students are encouraged to find the solution on their own, it is of course the job of the educator to guide the students to the right answer.

We constructed lesson plans for a wide range of publics with different profiles and ages. From introducing young children to the wonderful world of microbes to teaching bachelor levels students about mistakes that one can make in the lab.

For our first activity we taught several water and environment related words to children who had recently immigrated to Belgium. This would not only introduced them to a new vocabulary but it also gave them a chance to improve their Dutch.

We taught children how to construct water filtering system with materials you can easily find. The children were first encouraged to use their creativity and ingenuity to make their own filtering system and were later helped if they struggled. Some children were even able to almost completely clear muddy water.

We paid a visit to a high school where we introduced high school students to the subject of molecular biology and the amazing things you can accomplish with synthetic biology. We thought it would be quite boring to only sit in front of the class and talk so we convinced the teacher to also let the students do some practical work. The students got to extract their own DNA out of cells in their mouth. This gave them a feeling on how these experiments could be practically achieved.

We got the chance to present our project to a class full of international bachelor students. As they were already familiar with the field, we decided to give them more challenging exercises. We constructed a Whodunit type of exercise in which the students were confronted with a lab mistake, which had actually happened to us, and had to figure out what had gone wrong based on our lab procedures and schedule. We ended the lesson with a quiz with incrementally challenging questions where the group who had the most points at the end went home with a bag full of Belgian delicacies and drinks.

Our proudest accomplishment is however the children’s book we wrote and illustrated on our own. This book fights against the stigma against bacteria. You follow Bert, the good bacteria, as he introduces you to his many microbial friends. Each of his friends explains what their role is and how essential they are in their respective ecosystems. We’re so proud of this book that we translated it in three languages, and put them available to read for free on our website. .

As you can see we organized a varied set of activities for several kinds of publics. All of our teaching material will also be made available on our website for any interested teachers looking to spice up their lessons. It would mean a lot if you could grant us a special prize for education as a lot of effort was put into this aspect of the competition.

Kind Regards,