Communication
Effective communication of scientific work to various groups should be an integral part of what a researcher strives to achieve. During the iGEM competition, teams are encouraged to put themselves out there and communicate their progress, their ideas, scientific insights and other interesting information to their chosen demographics. In our team, communication spanned various methods: social media, online content (i.e. podcasts, videos and webinars) and newsletters.
Social Media
Mission
At the beginning of our project, we set out to meet these goals: to educate, to exchange ideas, and to entertain.
Platforms
To make sure that we reach a variety of people, we chose several different social media platforms. Our main platforms are Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
Instagram’s picture based user interface made it the ideal platform for us to keep our followers updated on the progress of our project. We used it to introduce our team members, inform about events that we’ve been planning, share the progress of our collaborations and educate about our project.
Staying in contact with other teams is something that was very important to us throughout our project and without it we wouldn’t have made the progress we did. Instagram provided an excellent platform for this. We were able to find new teams, follow their journey and interact with them and the direct messages feature provided a way to directly communicate and collaborate with the other teams.
Twitter is a great platform that makes it easy to spread the newest developments in science and technology to a wider following. In our outreach, we mainly retweeted interesting insights into scientific developments, spread the word about iGEM events, shared surveys created by other iGEM teams and connected with other teams in mutual struggles and experiences.
TikTok
TikTok is a platform that reaches a very diverse range of people of all ages, all social and educational backgrounds, all around the world. As our goal is to make science accessible for everyone, TikTok was perfect for us. We shared the ups and downs of our project in a way that is understandable und entertaining even for people who don’t have a background in science. With short and funny videos that were following current trends, we wanted to provoke interest in science in all people, particularly teenagers and young adults that we wouldn’t have been able to reach on other platforms.
Additionally, we wanted to raise awareness around mental illnesses. As many of our team members struggle with their mental health, we saw a need to normalise mental illnesses, by being open about it and showing that there’s no need to be ashamed about needing medication or therapy. We hope that this way we can be role models for any young people struggling.
Online Content
Team Exeter Test Tube Podcast
We were extremely excited to be kindly invited by iGEM team Exeter to their podcast. We were able to talk to them about our project, our iGEM experiences, and funny stories paired with advice to future teams and other listeners. As it is available on a variety of podcast platforms, our message can spread to anyone with an internet connection, making it more accessible. In the relaxed atmosphere, we were able to talk casually, and took care to simplify scientific concepts to make the content digestible to anyone who is interested. It was an extremely pleasant episode that our team leader, Tatyana, and lab team leader, Julia, thoroughly enjoyed taking part in. You can find the episode on YouTube in two parts as the Test Tube Podcast
Project Promotion Video
One of our main deliverables was a project promotion video. In this short video we introduced our project, specifically why and how our bricks were created. This deliverable offered us an opportunity to create a video that anyone would be able to understand, making our message more digestible.
In the first part of the video we show the effects of climate change caused due to the production of building materials. We took it as our task to create a more eco-friendly building material. In the next scene we introduce cyanobacteria to the audience, followed by Pichia pastoris (and us). Cyanobakteria take C02 from the air and convert it into solid calciumcarbonate using a carboxysome. This however leaves us with unstructured mineral deposits.
Next, Pichia pastoris enters the stage. By using various plasmids the Pichia can produce different crosslinking biopolymers (spider silk, gelatin, PHB) for potential bricks. The crosslinking biopolymers, desert sand, ligmen and the calciumcarbonate form our environmentally friendly brick. In the final part of the video we discuss the potential impact of our project: Offering Manufactures to rethink established production processes to create a more eco friendly future.
The video subtitles were written in 8 languages: English, German, Dutch, Russian, French, Catalan, Spanish and Turkish.
The videos animation were based upon a storyboard created in Clip Studio Paint and a prewritten skript. The frames for the video were also drawn with Clip Studio Paint, the audio was recorded on Audacity. These two parts were combined and cut with active presenter.
Coding with Biology Webinars
This collaborative effort of a number of iGEM teams was mainly focused on life science students, for whom coding may be an intimidating, but necessary subject. However, in the hosting ouf the webinars (further details you can find on our UCL partnership page) online allowed an open access to the information in these webinars. By advertising the webinars on our Instagram, we sent out the message to everyone who would be willing to learn something new about applications of coding in the life sciences.
The Newsletter
Our monthly newsletter was intended to update readers on our progress while also explaining the concept of iGEM and introducing our team. The main target with this form of communication was our sponsors, so they could have an insight on the on-goings once a month. Or team is structured in subgroups and we decided that the best format for the newsletter is to give updates in each, putting the focus on the group that had the most interesting work in that month. Further, we also included special events that took place and gave an outlook on our next goals. With this, we hoped to give everyone interested in our project development an overview and insight peeks. You can find an example of such a newsletter here