Our team has a total of 20 undergraduates, they come from chemistry, chemistry, chemistry, computer, physics, English, economics and other different majors, different grades, have different gender and sexual orientation. The level of cognition of biology is even more inconsistent. The greatest thing in common as a group of non-biological students is our interest in biology.
In order to give you a more professional understanding of synthetic biology, our supervisor and graduate students first organized a three-month systematic study of synthetic biology knowledge. At the same time, students from different groups had various trainings (students in the modeling group conducted training on biochemical reaction modeling, and students in the experimental group conducted training on synthetic biology experiment skills).
After a certain knowledge base, each of us was brainstorming proposal planning. We voted together, and finally thought out a wonderful intersection [put a link to inspiration], forming our current project.
The following is our interview with some team members on the relationship between their respective employment majors and project work:
Junchao Zhang (majoring in Information Technology): In my opinion, attending iGEM is just an interdisciplinary attempt for me personally. When learning as an information technology major, I often think about the application scenarios of the knowledge I have learned. In iGEM, I chose the modeling group and wanted to try to use what I have learned to solve some problems. Participating in iGEM has not only broadened my horizon, but also made me feel the role of information technology in basic science such as biology today. I think all the players in the same major as me have gained a lot from using information technology to solve practical problems in this iGEM event. In addition, team training is not a professional distinction, and I also had the honor to try some biological experimental operations that I had never experienced, which gradually aroused my interest in synthetic biology. These days in BIT-China were an unforgettable experience for me.
Jiashuo Lee (majoring in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering): As the saying goes, "Biology and chemistry are not separated". As a chemistry student, I of course also have a strong interest in biology, and synthetic biology is originally a deep intersection of biology and chemistry. As an international competition in synthetic biology, iGEM has been caught my attention. It is both an opportunity and a challenge to join the BIT-China experimental team group for me. I am sure that I can gain an unusual experience in this team.
Rongyue Sun (majoring in English Culture and Language): I'm keen on chemistry and biology science since I was in high school. I would like to realize my unachieved Ideal through participating in IGEM competition in the light of my passion and the previous knowledge collected by observation and experiment. What's more, for the sake of anticipating to improve and ascend my level of professional knowledges in biochemistry, I deem that this is a good opportunity to have access to the most advanced technology and expand my personal dimensions in various orientations. Attending in translating works and can also let the English Knowledge I learned in collage be fully utilized. As an English major student, this is a good chance to apply my learning in both fields.
Zhiyue Xu (majoring in Environmental Design): As a student of environmental design, my major is not related to a wide variety of organisms, but also to the products of synthetic biology. I also have a certain curiosity about synthetic biology. I want the whole process of the iGEM competition to be closer to synthetic biology, to learn more relevant knowledge, and then apply it to life.
Our education is aimed at all levels of knowledge of all ages. We prepared for young children plain and fresh and lovely picture books, for middle school teenagers in China's most popular video website (known as "China pipeline") made a series of popular science video, for the university undergraduates (and BIT team) for synthetic biology and iGEM competition academic preaching, more popular during the 11 National Day in the Beijing museum of yue roadshow popular science activities.
In terms of the art design of picture books, we specially made a choice of color, took care of the color-weak people, and launched a special Braille version..
In the preparation of picture books, we have not only Chinese and English versions, but also German, Spanish, Japanese and some small languages.
