Communication
Introduction
This year we decided on a project in the field of manufacturing, with implementation possibilities on space stations or similar remote places. We noticed that for many people, applications in biology are often restricted to the field of health or pharmacology, especially in times of a pandemic. Society also associates biology with environmental approaches or with the food industry due to climate change. But in reality the applications are, like CosMIC shows, much broader, such that we connected microbiology, synthetic biology and manufacturing. Something that is not the first thing to associate with biology, when you ask students. In general, we realized that society has to become more enlightened about synthetic biology and the positive impact it can have in all kinds of fields.
Workshop and Pecha Kucha talk at "Campus der Ideen" with UNIVERSEH
Last semester there was an event at our university, called the “Campus der Ideen” (Campus of ideas). It included many workshops, presentations and competitions about innovation, with the goal to connect people from different faculties and promote networking and learning about how to find new innovative ideas and projects. Together with UNIVERSEH, the European Space University for Earth and Humanity, we held a workshop on May 11th, which was about innovation and project finding for example for startups. We, the iGEM-team Düsseldorf, were a perfect example, since we had to develop an idea of a project at the beginning of the year. UNIVERSEH gave us the opportunity to present our workflow from the idea to the actual project. Another topic of the workshop was “pitching your project”, where many of our members participated as well, so it was an opportunity for us to learn something too! Later that day UNIVERSEH organized a Pecha Kucha talk, where we presented synthetic biology and our project to other scientists on 20 slides in 20 seconds each. We are glad that we participated in this interesting talk!
Highschool visits
In order to pursue our job to educate society, we visited some highschools and conducted workshops and presentations. We chose biology classes to reach a suitable audience and potential future scientists, who are interested in what we are doing. We gave them an overview of iGEM, the competition itself and its goals. Furthermore, we discussed the advantages and risks of synthetic biology and genetic engineering, as well as its possible applications.
Highschool at Bayreutherstraße, Wuppertal
On 9th of June 2022, two of our members visited the former highschool of one of us in Wuppertal. To make it more enjoyable for the children, we added a Kahoot quiz to our presentation. The students learned astonishing facts about biology and about space travel, for finding the transition to our project, which we of course introduced to them as well.
Norbert Gymnasium Knechtsteden, Dormagen
On the 21st September, we visited another former school of one of our members. It was very outstanding that the students asked so much about synthetic biology and our project. Not only did the students give us good input, also the teacher Dr. Scharfenberg helped us with some of our problems and has always been open to our questions regarding our lab work, since he has a scientific background and a doctor's degree in Biology as well.
Vocational college, Hilden
On the 28th September, we also visited the Berufskolleg Hilden, where one of our members qualified as a lab technician. We presented iGEM, synthetic biology and our project to a class of pupils who study there to complete their apprenticeship as lab technicians. In preparation for this presentation we also met with some of the teachers, who all had a doctor's degree and background in biology, to talk about our project and 3D printing in general, as they were very interested and also joined our final presentation in the school. It was great to present our project to an audience which was very committed to Biology.
