PARTNERSHIP

Our teams are both working in the lab to engineer Saccharomyces cerevisiaeand we have exchanged viewpoints on each other's projects since the early stages which was productive. In later stages, we have collaborated on the creation and distribution of the inclusivity survey “SEN students in STEM”. This partnership allowed both of us to reflect on some crucial iGEM parts, revise our strategies, as well as to have supportive friends from another team.

INCLUSIVITY

Our Estonia_TUIT team, while guiding the Latvia-Riga team through the inclusivity part, decided together with our partnering team to collaborate on the creation of an inclusivity survey “SEN students in STEM” regarding students with special education needs (SEN).

The goal of the survey is to spread awareness about the challenges SEN students encounter while pursuing their education in the field of STEM and find ways to make STEM more accessible and welcoming for SEN students. Together with iGEM Latvia-Riga we developed the survey questions in English, and then translated the survey into Estonian and Latvian languages. Estonia_TUIT team distributed the survey among students at the University of Tartu and the SENsationalSTEM project, which focuses on training SEN-students in STEM-based entrepreneurship. Latvia-Riga distributed the survey among students at the University of Latvia and other educational institutions.

Our team analyzed the answers of respondents from Estonia while the Latvia-Riga team did that for respondents from Latvia. Combining the data, together we drew conclusions about the main barriers to inclusive education in Baltic countries and summarized the suggestions of respondents on how to make the STEM field more accessible.

BALTIC JAMBOREE

On August 19th-21st, a delegation of Estonia_TUIT team participated in a Baltic Jamboree 2022 in Vilnius organized by the Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM team. During this 2-day event, together with Vilnius-Lithuania and Latvia-Riga iGEM teams we discussed our projects, shared our iGEM experience and advice, as well as got inspired by each other! On the first day of the Baltic Jamboree, we went on a visit to ThermoFisher Scientific - the world-leading supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables. Also, we listened to the presentations of guest speakers - representatives of the biotechnology field in the Baltics and founders of the iGEM tradition in Lithuania. Then, our teams presented this year’s projects and shared ideas for improving them. The second day of the Baltic Jamboree was more about socializing to build close connections - together with Latvian and Lithuanian iGEM teams we went for a long hike in Lithuanian forests. This was also beneficial to have a relaxed mind heading towards the most intense time of iGEM. Our Estonia_TUIT team is very thankful to the Vilnius-Lithuania team for organizing such a memorable event that enabled our teams to collaborate more closely, to share the experience and to have valuable discussions on synthetic biology in the Baltics and our projects. It initiated the foundation of close collaboration between the neighbors.

MENTORSHIP

Our neighbor country’s iGem team Latvia-Riga is participating in iGem for the first time. At the same time our team has gone through successful iGEM journeys for multiple years. So, we were happy to share our experience and help to guide them in this journey. During this season, we have mentored the Latvia-Riga team by sharing our experience and providing feedback for different aspects of their project. Specifically, we organized workshops for Human Practices surveys and Wiki creation, as well as clarified other important parts of a project, such as contributions. Our supervisors and team’s alumni also joined the mentorship, providing expertise gained over the years.

HUMAN PRACTICES

To help the iGEM Latvia-Riga team, we shared our perspectives on the ways of communicating iGEM projects and their impact on the world. Every year, the Estonia_TUIT team conducts a public survey which is an important part of our work on human practices to bring awareness to the issues we are solving and to get the general public’s input. The Latvia-Riga team agreed that a public survey can provide valuable information that may help with the design of the project and to understand the reflection on it, and they were interested to learn about our approach for carrying out these surveys. Thus, we organized a special meeting during which we shared our experience and guidelines on the creation of a public survey for iGEM project.

INCLUSIVITY

Our Estonia_TUIT team introduced to the Latvia-Riga team the importance of making an effort to promote inclusivity and diversity in every iGEM project. This part of iGEM is not obligatory, but our team believes that it is important to share science with diverse crowd and try to include people who might be in a group that is excluded due to language barrier, disabilities, age and other factors. As this year inclusivity was one of the major parts of Estonia_TUIT work, we shared our approaches to inlusiviry with Latvia-Riga team and ways that it can be done, which later lead to a continuous partnership with their team for inclusivity survey.

WIKI CREATING

Designing an intuitive, accessible and clear Wiki page is a very challenging task for any iGEM project, especially if the team participates in iGEM for the first time. Thus, we discussed all aspects of Wiki page creation, including design, coding, and texts. Our team provided advice on different stages of website creation, from writing the content to timeline of uploading files, sharing our previous years experience.