Synthetic and Molecular Biology Lecture Series

Synthetic and Molecular Biology Online Lecture Series

This lecture series was carried out in the online mode.

We invited various college professors to give talks regarding various aspects of Synthetic biology over a span of 1 month. The sessions were recorded and made open source for all college students to have a look. The list of lectures were:-

• “Development of synthetic protocols for nucleoside-based fluorescent, bio-probes and commercially relevant molecules” - Dr. Anant Kapdi(ICT Mumbai)
• “Synthetic and systems biology for cellular and microbial engineering” - Dr. Sunil Laxman(InStem)
• “Synthetic biology in agriculture and food” - Dr. Archana Chugh(IIT Delhi)
• “Synthetic biology in the Pharmaceutical industry” - Dr. Deepak Kumar Saini(IISC Bangalore)
• “Intellectual Property Rights and Biosafety”- Dr. Shamlan Reshamwala(ICT-Mumbai)
• “Design and Analysis of Experiments”- Dr. Shamlan Reshamwala (ICT-Mumbai)

There was tremendous participation from the students’ side. The sessions were very interactive with a lot of bubbling and enthusiastic students posing questions to the speakers. The professors imparted knowledge based on their expertise and explained real-life applications with regard to various aspects of Synthetic and Molecular biology thereby developing keenness in students. We had invited students from all universities through an extensive outreach. The drive link of these lectures have been made available to students from all years of only our University. However, owing to requests from some of the lecturers, we cannot circulate the link outside our University.

Before the lecture series by external Professors was organised, Darsh Vithlani from our team organised a lecture series for the students. The content that was used was from MITOCW. He explained the Fundamentals of Biology by Professor Eric Lander. By pausing the video at relevant places, making the students think at relevant places adding complex questions he was able to generate interest and create an impact in the understanding of the students. Because everyone at our university is an engineer, he gave drew relevant parallels between molecular biology and engineering to make students appreciate the natural processes and control operations happening in cells even better.

We collected feedback from parents for the iGEMxICTMumbai Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and Genetics Lectures. Following are the Feedback Form For Parents Responses:

1. On a scale of 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree, rate the content of the lectures
   

On a scale of 1 - very uninstructive to 5 - very instructive, rate the instructors for their communication

On a scale of 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree, the workshop was conducted well by the iGEM Team of ICT Mumbai

On a scale of 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree, how likely are you to recommend we organize more such workshops in the future?

On a scale of 1 - highly uninterested to 5 - highly interested, how interested will your child be in attending a follow-up, more advanced workshop in the future?

On a scale of 1-strongly disagree to 5- strongly agree, you think this workshop enlightened your child and motivated him further to explore molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics.