Education

BioArt Exhibit. . As a part of our endeavor to showcase our team’s amazing work and continue to educate the community on the power of bioart, our team created a bioart exhibit in buildings around the Cornell campus. The main exhibit space is PSB, the physical science building where students take chemistry, physics, and labs classes. After meeting with building coordinators, we picked a high traffic space for our presentation to maximize the number of viewers. Adam Shulman, a Cornell AAP student and one of our stakeholders, was pivotal in designing the exhibit. With Adam’ assistant, our team designed a presentation that spans two tables. Both tables will be covered in paper with tiny squares printed onto it. One the main parts of the table, there will be large squares for showcasing technical pieces from the project (including things such as a bioreactor impeller). The large squares will be surrounded by the tiny squares, which are meant for people to draw tiny art pieces in. The art pieces can be scanned into our team’s app, and then 3D printed! The bioart exhibit offers an exceptional chance for us to integrate the input of our stakeholders, the technical work of the team, and the educational focus for the project in one event. BioArt Lab. . For our project, one of our biggest focuses was on the education of how science and art can be integrated as one interdisciplinary field of bioart. Given that our university places a high value on the idea of “any person, any study”, we felt this would align with our university’s values and motto. Yet to our surprise, there was no major bioart focus or initiative on our campus. After speaking with bio artist Suzanne Anker and hearing about her lab and labs being started at the University of Buffalo and SVA, we decided that introducing a bioart lab to Cornell’s campus was important to us and would be one of the biggest focuses of our education on campus. We started this process by reaching out to the College of Engineering and the Cornell Project team's admin, Lauren Stulgis, to get a better understanding of the process behind starting a lab at Cornell and what we would need to consider and cover. One of the first steps was to look at possible faculty that would be interested in a project like this. Because we wanted the focus to be on booth art and science, we thought it would be interesting to either have two PIs for a joint lab or to have a main PI who is in the sciences as they would be the one more in charge of safety and training of the actual engineering lab materials and techniques and have an art professor serve as another advisor. We looked at professors like Tamer Uyar who specializes in fiber and polymer science for possible PIs as well as artists like Oasa DuVerney, who has a special interest in interdisciplinary art. However, many professors and faculty at Cornell have obligations and labs of their own, meaning that if we were to introduce a lab on campus, it would have to be with new faculty. The next step in this process was looking at different lab spaces. Since we wanted to emphasize that this is still under the field of scientific research, it was one of our goals to make sure that the lab space was in one of the bioengineering or science buildings on campus. We looked at Weill, which is where the biomedical engineering department is located; Olin Hall, which is where the chemical engineering department is located; and Baker Laboratory, where the chemistry department is located. Unfortunately, after speaking with the admin of these departments, it was clear that there is no additional space available for our lab. We also looked at one of the future buildings on campus, Atkinson’s Hall, a building that is focused on interdisciplinary work on campus, directly aligning with our mission. However, this building is just in its first stages and isn’t ready for us to use or have access to at this point. This was one of the biggest setbacks in our efforts to create the bioart lab. After looking at locations, we started to look into funding. To start a lab, considering that this lab would still fall under science research, we looked at traditional grants that labs that are just starting at would apply for. The NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services hadite a fw grants that would be related to starting a bioengineering lab. For bioart specific work, we looked at some individual grants that bio artists that we work with could look at. One grant that caught our attention was the Creative Capital Wild Futures grant. This grant has a focus on “funding freedom of expression through groundbreaking ideas in art” with a specific focus on technology and bioengineering which directly aligns with the motivation of our lab. However, this grant is only individually funded which is great for those who may join our lab, but doesn’t give funding directly to our lab. We also looked at the National Endowment for the Arts Research Labs grant as it directly aligns with our work focusing on transdisciplinary research between art and non-art fields. One of the biggest components of a bioart lab would be to actually have the technology and resources for the bio artists to use. One of the suggestions that we received from bioartist Meghan Moe Beitiks was to find a space that already has these resources for us to use and to start with an artist whose medium is based in one of these resources. That way, we have the resources ready for them to use and it helps us reduce the funding needed initially. This was one of the biggest motivations for why we wanted to have a lab space within one of the science buildings because they have a lot of those resources already. Some of the resources that bio artists use depend on the research they plan on conducting. For instance, given that iGEM works primarily with traditional genetic engineering techniques, a bioart lab to serve our purposes would include material like microscopes, micropipettes, etc The last criteria that we looked into was the requirements for who would be joining our lab. We couldn’t get too in detail into this as this would depend on the resources that we have available on campus and whether they align with the mediums that the artist uses. However, some other things that we wanted to consider were that we wanted the lab to have both artists and scientists. While a majority of bioart labs have research that is conducted primarily by artists, we thought that having members of the lab in various engineering and science related fields would help with training and would also encourage them to pursue art related research projects in the lab. We also wanted to include people through different ages and experience levels including the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate level because we think that this field is something that people should be aware of and involved in regardless of their prior experience. Specifically, we reached out to multiple people to gauge interest on our campus and have gotten positive interest from undergraduate and graduate students in art history, global development, biology and more. In our survey, 100% of respondents were interested in being apart of a bioart lab. Ultimately, despite the research and steps we took to start a bioart lab on campus, unfortunately, it is out of our scope to be able to start a bioart lab on our own. This is something that we do hope to look at further through the years to see if we can start in the future as lab space and funding from the College of Engineering opens up. We are also considering promoting bioart on campus on a smaller scale through introducing a class on campus or starting a club. Either way, bioart is something that we think is important to promote and relevant to our university’s mission, making it all the more important that we raise awareness about it around campus and beyond. Make your own MicroMurals: the Game. . MicroMurals Game. Since one of our project’s primary tools was to use microbial art to encourage interdisciplinary education in both the arts and the sciences, we thought that it would be helpful to create a video game to help students and other users understand the engineering process behind a MicroMural. We chose to make an online game in comparison to a board game so that we could reach a wider audience and drive down cost of production if we were to market the game; in fact, choosing to make the game online makes it completely free for students to play with! It is also a good way to further integrate technology with our project. MicroMurals: The Game is a prime educational tool because it combines learning and entertainment, allowing students and all users to have fun and build positive associations with science. In fact, using this “Choose your Adventure” style game in pedagogy will allow you to build on both cognitive and non-cognitive skills like decision-making, discipline, patience, and nurturing curiosity. However, one of the most important facets of MicroMurals the Game is that it encourages users to engage with the scientific method in a fun way as they walk through the trial and error engineering process of making microbial art while being guided by our own mascot! Splash! Outreach Event. . iGEM Cornell presented a program about women in synthetic biology to high school students through an educational showcase, Splash! at Cornell. The goal of our event was to promote diversity in the STEM field for underrepresented groups, particularly within female and non-binary high school students. As we completed this outreach event, there were several things of note. Students enjoyed the hands-on components the most as seen through their engagement and activity-driven questions. Furthermore, we realized that being able to adapt on the spot was key to creating a successful educational experience and platform where students could feel free to ask questions. We strived to create an inclusive environment where no questions or comments were seen negatively. Engaging with younger students is central to good outreach as they are the future of this field. Furthermore, we hoped to encourage female and non-binary-identifying children especially into the field, reinforcing the narrative that there is a space for everyone in any field, including STEM. It is important to actively engage and thus, encourage students to tap into their scientific curiosity. The extra time available for answering student questions was an excellent use of resources and seemed much appreciated. It was important to foster this two-way dialogue, enabling children to gain confidence in satiating their curiosity and to explore further applications of the topics introduced. To improve upon future outreach, we thought we could alter the presentation to be more engaging. While the presentation went well, we believe with additional practice and interactive questions would have engaged the students more. This point was furthered as seen when our extra time was given to answering student questions. Furthermore, pre-packaging materials and making group decisions on how long everything will take would improve the activities, since that way nothing would need to be cut and could improve flow. For the future, it is also important to be more aware of our audience. Although these activities were thoroughly enjoyed by our cohort, especially the interactive ones, they may have been a bit too juvenile for this age range. Overall, everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and thought the outreach went well! For next time, increased preparation, communication, and a run-through may improve the effectiveness of the outreach. Sciencenter. . iGem Cornell conducted an outreach event at the Sciencenter, a children’s museum located in Ithaca, NY. The event consisted of three educational stations: one science station, one art station, and one integration of science and art stations. At the science station, children played with biobricks to explain the components of biology. At the art station, children had the opportunity to follow the scientific process through a paint activity. Children placed a number of bouncy balls into a cardboard box filled with a piece of paper and paint. Before shaking the box, they established their prediction. Then, they conducted the experiment. Afterwards, they drew conclusions, determined if the results were aligned with their predictions, and pondered about potential implications and results if the scientific procedure was adjusted. At the science-art station, children were exposed to the creation of oobleck through everyday materials. Furthermore, they were encouraged to draw with markers to make the oobleck their own. At each station, there was a slight educational introduction done by our team but the activity was primarily driven by the child as we wanted to conduct inquiry-based education. After our interview with Ali Jackson, a stakeholder who works at the Sciencenter, she recommended completing interactive activities to maximize retention and engagement with our audience of children. We prioritized creating an inclusive environment, purposely engaging and individualizing our messages to the audience at hand. The children tended to be towards the younger side but despite that were very engaged. Having stations enabled children to move through the stations as they pleased and receive individual attention from the people manning each station. It made the interactions more meaningful. In addition to these one on one interactions, children were engaged due to the interactive activities. Each station had an activity where children were hands-on. These activities were well-structured, providing an educational background first, completing the activity, and finally reinforcing the connection between the educational segment to the activity. The station that was the most popular was the cornstarch oobleck station; this activity showcased the connection between art and science and reinforced that this medium has the potential to spark scientific curiosity. For improvement of the activities, one may consider utilizing small lid-sealed containers, rather than cardboard boxes, for the ball and paint activity to ensure the containers would not break and could easily be held in a small child’s hand. Despite some shortcomings, this outreach event engaged children thoroughly and allowed them to gain insight into the intersection between science and art. Longview Senior Living Community. . iGEM Cornell conducted an outreach event to Longview Senior Living Community, a retirement center located in Ithaca. The event consisted of first a presentation on the history of bioart and important people in the field. We made sure that the font on the presentation was large so that if any residents were hard of hearing, they could still read the slides, and we used microphones to be as loud as possible. We presented two sides of the bioart ethics argument to them, emphasizing that while the field has immense potential for creativity and raising important questions about moral issues using biotechnology techniques, there are also questions about how ethical it is to modify naturally occurring organisms to do so. As part of the presentation we also presented four different case studies about morally ambiguous art pieces so that the residents had a better understanding about what bioart actually looks like in the world and the questions that arise as a result. After the presentation, we hosted a debate session with the residents where we asked them a series of questions about bioart to start off the debate including questions like how should bioart be defined, how should the field be regulated, and more. They were engaged and kept questioning why these questions were even important. They brought up possible examples of bioart that we had never considered before including tattoos and jewelry made of human remains like children’s teeth or the ashes of loved ones, a practice that has been around for ages. The reason why we chose to hosts the debate at a residential community instead of people around our age group was largely because we wanted to be inclusive to a different generation which means they have different ideas and experiences that shape the way they think about the world, allowing them to bring up examples and perspective that we may not have even heard of. We also asked them, given their experience, whether they thought that bioart would be a field that faded or whether it would stand the test of time. It was a great experience because while we were able to teach and raise awareness to the residents about this field that they hadn’t heard of before, we were also able to learn a lot about how the older generation and public may feel about the ethical issues surrounding the project. At the end of the event, we got feedback from the residents about how they felt about the event both verbally and through handwritten notes. The residents mentioned to us that they really appreciated that the event helped to engage them and allowed them to really think while teaching them about something they hadn’t heard before. One future improvement they suggested for us to consider for a debate event with senior citizens would be to not just have microphones for ourselves, but also to hand them out to the residents because at times, they couldn't understand what other residents were saying as well. Ultimately, the outreach debate event was a great learning experience for both us and the residents as well and will be an event we continue to host in the future. BBBS Match Event. . Our collaboration with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ithaca and University of Rochester was an exceptional chance to engage with both the Ithaca community and other iGEM teams! During our event, BBBS matches came to the Ithaca Youth Bureau to complete activities centered around the inner working of synthetic biology and bioart. With a total of four stations, matches had a variety of options for ways to learn more about science. The positive feedback from the sciencenter outreach event resulted in our team choosing to continue using the same general set of activities: one station explaining synthetic biology with legos, one station using paint to explain the scientific process, and one station using oobleck to model hydrogels. The target audience for this presentation was BBBS matches, with participants ranging from the ages of 8-45 years old. Because of the diversity of the audience, all content was presented in understandable language the materials were non-toxic and washable (for easy and safe clean up). By combining hands-on activities with verbal explanations, it gave matches ample opportunity to engage with the content and discuss their thoughts on the project with the team. Next Steps for MicroMurals for Increasing Inclusivity In essence, the Cornell iGEM Policy and Practices team truly believes that MicroMurals serves as a catalyst for introducing the field of bioart into an educational setting. This bioart project integrates the sciences and the arts into aesthetic microbial art, enabling us to use this project as a way to advocate for sustainable art and encourage students to pursue interdisciplinary careers in STEM and the liberal arts. While this project is certainly a step in the right direction, there are many ways in which we can further expand our outreach efforts and educate wider groups of people. One way in which our project might be made more inclusive is if we continue to intentionally reach out to populations that might not have immediate access to art. While we had the opportunity to share our BioArt with local senior centers and youth centers like Big Brothers and Big Sisters, we hope to share our project with marginalized communities like those who are incarcerated, experiencing homelessness, and the large migrant worker population in Upstate New York to shed light on this new development in art and science that they otherwise might not have encountered; this would occur in combination with continued outreach to local schools and universities through presentations, ethical debates, and demonstrations. Through this, we hope to combat some of the exclusivity often associated with art and emerging technologies. We are also cognizant of the fact that some may be financially limited from engaging with MicroMurals. As such, we will continue to choose convenient locations and minimize any costs associated with attending some of our outreach events to make MicroMurals accessible to all. In fact, all of our outreach events thus far were free and open to the public! As aforementioned, one of the defining characteristics of MicroMurals is that they represent a combination of the arts and the sciences. In order to complete the ethics and policy analysis surrounding this project, we had to reference perspectives from leaders in BioArt, microbiology, visual arts, psychology, engineering, bioethics, policy, technology, and education to build a quality project. Continuing to source opinions and insights from a broad range of disciplines would help make our project more inclusive, since it would include more perspectives, which can then reach a wider and more diverse audience. In terms of the microbial art itself, we hope to eventually add a sensory component or tactile materials to MicroMurals so that those who may be visually impaired can still engage with our project. This could accompany our existing exhibit set up, which consists of the MicroMural itself, a written explanation of the project and the design process, and an audio description guide.

BioArt Exhibit

BioArt Exhibit Plan
As a part of our endeavor to showcase our team’s amazing work and continue to educate the community on the power of bioart, our team created a bioart exhibit in buildings around the Cornell campus. The main exhibit space is PSB, the physical science building where students take chemistry, physics, and labs classes. After meeting with building coordinators, we picked a high traffic space for our presentation to maximize the number of viewers. Adam Shulman, a Cornell AAP student and one of our stakeholders, was pivotal in designing the exhibit. With Adam’ assistant, our team designed a presentation that spans two tables. Both tables will be covered in paper with tiny squares printed onto it. One the main parts of the table, there will be large squares for showcasing technical pieces from the project (including things such as a bioreactor impeller). The large squares will be surrounded by the tiny squares, which are meant for people to draw tiny art pieces in. The art pieces can be scanned into our team’s app, and then 3D printed! The bioart exhibit offers an exceptional chance for us to integrate the input of our stakeholders, the technical work of the team, and the educational focus for the project in one event.
To learn more about starting a BioArt Lab, click here.

BioArt Lab

For our project, one of our biggest focuses was on the education of how science and art can be integrated as one interdisciplinary field of bioart. Given that our university places a high value on the idea of “any person, any study”, we felt this would align with our university’s values and motto. Yet to our surprise, there was no major bioart focus or initiative on our campus. After speaking with bio artist Suzanne Anker and hearing about her lab and labs being started at the University of Buffalo and SVA, we decided that introducing a bioart lab to Cornell’s campus was important to us and would be one of the biggest focuses of our education on campus.

We started this process by reaching out to the College of Engineering and the Cornell Project team's admin, Lauren Stulgis, to get a better understanding of the process behind starting a lab at Cornell and what we would need to consider and cover. One of the first steps was to look at possible faculty that would be interested in a project like this. Because we wanted the focus to be on booth art and science, we thought it would be interesting to either have two PIs for a joint lab or to have a main PI who is in the sciences as they would be the one more in charge of safety and training of the actual engineering lab materials and techniques and have an art professor serve as another advisor. We looked at professors like Tamer Uyar who specializes in fiber and polymer science for possible PIs as well as artists like Oasa DuVerney, who has a special interest in interdisciplinary art. However, many professors and faculty at Cornell have obligations and labs of their own, meaning that if we were to introduce a lab on campus, it would have to be with new faculty.

The next step in this process was looking at different lab spaces. Since we wanted to emphasize that this is still under the field of scientific research, it was one of our goals to make sure that the lab space was in one of the bioengineering or science buildings on campus. We looked at Weill, which is where the biomedical engineering department is located; Olin Hall, which is where the chemical engineering department is located; and Baker Laboratory, where the chemistry department is located. Unfortunately, after speaking with the admin of these departments, it was clear that there is no additional space available for our lab. We also looked at one of the future buildings on campus, Atkinson’s Hall, a building that is focused on interdisciplinary work on campus, directly aligning with our mission. However, this building is just in its first stages and isn’t ready for us to use or have access to at this point. This was one of the biggest setbacks in our efforts to create the bioart lab.

After looking at locations, we started to look into funding. To start a lab, considering that this lab would still fall under science research, we looked at traditional grants that labs that are just starting at would apply for. The NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services hadite a fw grants that would be related to starting a bioengineering lab. For bioart specific work, we looked at some individual grants that bio artists that we work with could look at. One grant that caught our attention was the Creative Capital Wild Futures grant. This grant has a focus on “funding freedom of expression through groundbreaking ideas in art” with a specific focus on technology and bioengineering which directly aligns with the motivation of our lab. However, this grant is only individually funded which is great for those who may join our lab, but doesn’t give funding directly to our lab. We also looked at the National Endowment for the Arts Research Labs grant as it directly aligns with our work focusing on transdisciplinary research between art and non-art fields.

One of the biggest components of a bioart lab would be to actually have the technology and resources for the bio artists to use. One of the suggestions that we received from bioartist Meghan Moe Beitiks was to find a space that already has these resources for us to use and to start with an artist whose medium is based in one of these resources. That way, we have the resources ready for them to use and it helps us reduce the funding needed initially. This was one of the biggest motivations for why we wanted to have a lab space within one of the science buildings because they have a lot of those resources already. Some of the resources that bio artists use depend on the research they plan on conducting. For instance, given that iGEM works primarily with traditional genetic engineering techniques, a bioart lab to serve our purposes would include material like microscopes, micropipettes, etc
The last criteria that we looked into was the requirements for who would be joining our lab. We couldn’t get too in detail into this as this would depend on the resources that we have available on campus and whether they align with the mediums that the artist uses. However, some other things that we wanted to consider were that we wanted the lab to have both artists and scientists. While a majority of bioart labs have research that is conducted primarily by artists, we thought that having members of the lab in various engineering and science related fields would help with training and would also encourage them to pursue art related research projects in the lab. We also wanted to include people through different ages and experience levels including the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate level because we think that this field is something that people should be aware of and involved in regardless of their prior experience. Specifically, we reached out to multiple people to gauge interest on our campus and have gotten positive interest from undergraduate and graduate students in art history, global development, biology and more. In our survey, 100% of respondents were interested in being apart of a bioart lab.

Ultimately, despite the research and steps we took to start a bioart lab on campus, unfortunately, it is out of our scope to be able to start a bioart lab on our own. This is something that we do hope to look at further through the years to see if we can start in the future as lab space and funding from the College of Engineering opens up. We are also considering promoting bioart on campus on a smaller scale through introducing a class on campus or starting a club. Either way, bioart is something that we think is important to promote and relevant to our university’s mission, making it all the more important that we raise awareness about it around campus and beyond.

MicroMurals Mission: Video Game

MicroMurals Game
Since one of our project’s primary tools was to use microbial art to encourage interdisciplinary education in both the arts and the sciences, we thought that it would be helpful to create a video game to help students and other users understand the engineering process behind a MicroMural. We chose to make an online game in comparison to a board game so that we could reach a wider audience and drive down cost of production if we were to market the game; in fact, choosing to make the game online makes it completely free for students to play with! It is also a good way to further integrate technology with our project. MicroMurals Mission is a prime educational tool because it combines learning and entertainment, allowing students and all users to have fun and build positive associations with science. In fact, using this “Choose your Adventure” style game in pedagogy will allow you to build on both cognitive and non-cognitive skills like decision-making, discipline, patience, and nurturing curiosity. However, one of the most important facets of MicroMurals the Game is that it encourages users to engage with the scientific method in a fun way as they walk through the trial and error engineering process of making microbial art while being guided by our own mascot!

Screenshots from MicroMurals Mission Video Game

Check out our educational video game! (The web version currently only launches successfully on the Safari browser)

Splash! Outreach Event

iGEM Cornell presented a program about women in synthetic biology to high school students through an educational showcase, Splash! at Cornell. The goal of our event was to promote diversity in the STEM field for underrepresented groups, particularly within female and non-binary high school students. As we completed this outreach event, there were several things of note. Students enjoyed the hands-on components the most as seen through their engagement and activity-driven questions. Furthermore, we realized that being able to adapt on the spot was key to creating a successful educational experience and platform where students could feel free to ask questions. We strived to create an inclusive environment where no questions or comments were seen negatively. Engaging with younger students is central to good outreach as they are the future of this field. Furthermore, we hoped to encourage female and non-binary-identifying children especially into the field, reinforcing the narrative that there is a space for everyone in any field, including STEM. It is important to actively engage and thus, encourage students to tap into their scientific curiosity. The extra time available for answering student questions was an excellent use of resources and seemed much appreciated. It was important to foster this two-way dialogue, enabling children to gain confidence in satiating their curiosity and to explore further applications of the topics introduced. To improve upon future outreach, we thought we could alter the presentation to be more engaging. While the presentation went well, we believe with additional practice and interactive questions would have engaged the students more. This point was furthered as seen when our extra time was given to answering student questions. Furthermore, pre-packaging materials and making group decisions on how long everything will take would improve the activities, since that way nothing would need to be cut and could improve flow. For the future, it is also important to be more aware of our audience. Although these activities were thoroughly enjoyed by our cohort, especially the interactive ones, they may have been a bit too juvenile for this age range. Overall, everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and thought the outreach went well! For next time, increased preparation, communication, and a run-through may improve the effectiveness of the outreach.

Sciencenter

iGem Cornell conducted an outreach event at the Sciencenter, a children’s museum located in Ithaca, NY. The event consisted of three educational stations: one science station, one art station, and one integration of science and art stations. At the science station, children played with biobricks to explain the components of biology. At the art station, children had the opportunity to follow the scientific process through a paint activity. Children placed a number of bouncy balls into a cardboard box filled with a piece of paper and paint. Before shaking the box, they established their prediction. Then, they conducted the experiment. Afterwards, they drew conclusions, determined if the results were aligned with their predictions, and pondered about potential implications and results if the scientific procedure was adjusted. At the science-art station, children were exposed to the creation of oobleck through everyday materials. Furthermore, they were encouraged to draw with markers to make the oobleck their own. At each station, there was a slight educational introduction done by our team but the activity was primarily driven by the child as we wanted to conduct inquiry-based education. After our interview with Ali Jackson, a stakeholder who works at the Sciencenter, she recommended completing interactive activities to maximize retention and engagement with our audience of children. We prioritized creating an inclusive environment, purposely engaging and individualizing our messages to the audience at hand. The children tended to be towards the younger side but despite that were very engaged. Having stations enabled children to move through the stations as they pleased and receive individual attention from the people manning each station. It made the interactions more meaningful. In addition to these one on one interactions, children were engaged due to the interactive activities. Each station had an activity where children were hands-on. These activities were well-structured, providing an educational background first, completing the activity, and finally reinforcing the connection between the educational segment to the activity. The station that was the most popular was the cornstarch oobleck station; this activity showcased the connection between art and science and reinforced that this medium has the potential to spark scientific curiosity. For improvement of the activities, one may consider utilizing small lid-sealed containers, rather than cardboard boxes, for the ball and paint activity to ensure the containers would not break and could easily be held in a small child’s hand. Despite some shortcomings, this outreach event engaged children thoroughly and allowed them to gain insight into the intersection between science and art.

Longview Senior Living Community

Longeview BioArt Discussion Presentation
iGEM Cornell conducted an outreach event to Longview Senior Living Community, a retirement center located in Ithaca. The event consisted of first a presentation on the history of bioart and important people in the field. We made sure that the font on the presentation was large so that if any residents were hard of hearing, they could still read the slides, and we used microphones to be as loud as possible. We presented two sides of the bioart ethics argument to them, emphasizing that while the field has immense potential for creativity and raising important questions about moral issues using biotechnology techniques, there are also questions about how ethical it is to modify naturally occurring organisms to do so. As part of the presentation we also presented four different case studies about morally ambiguous art pieces so that the residents had a better understanding about what bioart actually looks like in the world and the questions that arise as a result. After the presentation, we hosted a debate session with the residents where we asked them a series of questions about bioart to start off the debate including questions like how should bioart be defined, how should the field be regulated, and more. They were engaged and kept questioning why these questions were even important. They brought up possible examples of bioart that we had never considered before including tattoos and jewelry made of human remains like children’s teeth or the ashes of loved ones, a practice that has been around for ages. The reason why we chose to hosts the debate at a residential community instead of people around our age group was largely because we wanted to be inclusive to a different generation which means they have different ideas and experiences that shape the way they think about the world, allowing them to bring up examples and perspective that we may not have even heard of. We also asked them, given their experience, whether they thought that bioart would be a field that faded or whether it would stand the test of time. It was a great experience because while we were able to teach and raise awareness to the residents about this field that they hadn’t heard of before, we were also able to learn a lot about how the older generation and public may feel about the ethical issues surrounding the project. At the end of the event, we got feedback from the residents about how they felt about the event both verbally and through handwritten notes. The residents mentioned to us that they really appreciated that the event helped to engage them and allowed them to really think while teaching them about something they hadn’t heard before. One future improvement they suggested for us to consider for a debate event with senior citizens would be to not just have microphones for ourselves, but also to hand them out to the residents because at times, they couldn't understand what other residents were saying as well. Ultimately, the outreach debate event was a great learning experience for both us and the residents as well and will be an event we continue to host in the future.

BBBS Match Event

Our collaboration with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Ithaca and University of Rochester was an exceptional chance to engage with both the Ithaca community and other iGEM teams! During our event, BBBS matches came to the Ithaca Youth Bureau to complete activities centered around the inner working of synthetic biology and bioart. With a total of four stations, matches had a variety of options for ways to learn more about science. The positive feedback from the sciencenter outreach event resulted in our team choosing to continue using the same general set of activities: one station explaining synthetic biology with legos, one station using paint to explain the scientific process, and one station using oobleck to model hydrogels. The target audience for this presentation was BBBS matches, with participants ranging from the ages of 8-45 years old. Because of the diversity of the audience, all content was presented in understandable language the materials were non-toxic and washable (for easy and safe clean up). By combining hands-on activities with verbal explanations, it gave matches ample opportunity to engage with the content and discuss their thoughts on the project with the team.

Next Steps for MicroMurals for Increasing Inclusivity

In essence, the Cornell iGEM Policy and Practices team truly believes that MicroMurals serves as a catalyst for introducing the field of bioart into an educational setting. This bioart project integrates the sciences and the arts into aesthetic microbial art, enabling us to use this project as a way to advocate for sustainable art and encourage students to pursue interdisciplinary careers in STEM and the liberal arts. While this project is certainly a step in the right direction, there are many ways in which we can further expand our outreach efforts and educate wider groups of people. One way in which our project might be made more inclusive is if we continue to intentionally reach out to populations that might not have immediate access to art. While we had the opportunity to share our BioArt with local senior centers and youth centers like Big Brothers and Big Sisters, we hope to share our project with marginalized communities like those who are incarcerated, experiencing homelessness, and the large migrant worker population in Upstate New York to shed light on this new development in art and science that they otherwise might not have encountered; this would occur in combination with continued outreach to local schools and universities through presentations, ethical debates, and demonstrations. Through this, we hope to combat some of the exclusivity often associated with art and emerging technologies. We are also cognizant of the fact that some may be financially limited from engaging with MicroMurals. As such, we will continue to choose convenient locations and minimize any costs associated with attending some of our outreach events to make MicroMurals accessible to all. In fact, all of our outreach events thus far were free and open to the public!

As aforementioned, one of the defining characteristics of MicroMurals is that they represent a combination of the arts and the sciences. In order to complete the ethics and policy analysis surrounding this project, we had to reference perspectives from leaders in BioArt, microbiology, visual arts, psychology, engineering, bioethics, policy, technology, and education to build a quality project. Continuing to source opinions and insights from a broad range of disciplines would help make our project more inclusive, since it would include more perspectives, which can then reach a wider and more diverse audience. In terms of the microbial art itself, we hope to eventually add a sensory component or tactile materials to MicroMurals so that those who may be visually impaired can still engage with our project. This could accompany our existing exhibit set up, which consists of the MicroMural itself, a written explanation of the project and the design process, and an audio description guide.