Introduction
It has been exciting experience to collaborate and explore projects with different iGEM teams in various and creative way together. This year, we focused on collaboration in education and communication events. Pooling knowledge and resources together, we have the opportunity to try more formats of public science education formats and realize more significant impact in a meaningful way.
Live Lecture
We IvyMaker-China carried out a wechat livestreamed collaboration lecture with six other high school teams. The lecture was about the introduction of synthetic biology in life as well as the propagation of each team’s program idea. Mainly, there were four fields covered:
- Environmental protection by IvyMaker-China, Worldshaper-NJBIOX, and Worldshaper-Nanjing;
- Cancer detection methodologies by Worldshaper-HZ;
- Disease treatments by Worldshaper-Shanghai and Worldshaper-HZBIOX;
- Food safety issues by GYHS;
Biological Laboratory and Instrument Manual Comic Book
IvyMaker-China collaborated and co-designed a comic book with Worldshaper-HZ and Worldshaper-Nanjing.
We printed out hard copy of the comic book, share and expose the materials to students in schools including Shanghai American School (in Shanghai), Pinghe International School (in Shanghai), Jinling High School (in Nanjing, Jiangsu), Beijing 101 International School (in Beijing), Ningbo Hanvos School (in Ningbo, Zhejiang), Hangzhou Dipont School of Arts and Science (in Hangzhou, Zhejiang), Huamei Bilingual School (in Dalian, Liaoning).
We have also provided several onsite education events introducing the lab instruments we used to primary and middle school.
We received positive feedback from the students that they would look forward to seeing a manual series if we would like to keep design and publication.
Public Science Art Exhibition
To increase the diversity of our educational programs and reach out to more population, we planned an exhibition. Thanks to the Collaboration Request Board on iGEM website, we reached out to iBowu-China to collaborate on a bio-art exhibition called “Into the Dimensionless-2022 Life On Earth”.
This exhibition seeks to debate about the now-popular human-centric point of view, which holds that mankind is the single most important element of existence in this world. Through the perspective of art, we explored the mysteries of the earth and embraced beautiful life. We encourage participants to take on the responsibility of scientists and active members of society, candidly reflecting upon the role us humans shall take in the 21st century.
iBowu-China together with Cyanostudio are responsible for the entire curation and execution stage of the physical exhibition, while IvyMaker-China is in charge of design and construction of the digital version of the exhibition (lifeonearth2022.com).
Questionnaire Collaboration
We saw a questionnaire collaboration post on iGEM website by team iGEM Thessaloniki, saying they would like to collect data regarding public knowledge about glioblastoma cancer and to understand public perspective on rare types of cancer.
We carefully read through the questionnaire and submit our answers. We hope our response could provide some perspective for team Thessaloniki, while we really liked and appreciated the format and interactive way the team designed the questionnaire, the detailed explanation after submission is both informative and educational.
