Social Media

When we started this iGEM season, we were determined to strengthen our social media presence on all platforms. One of the goals that we set for ourselves in the beginning was to increase our followers on Instagram. We worked on this goal by posting more regularly on our Instagram stories and posts. By the end of our iGEM journey, we satisfied our goal to an extent, as the number of our followers increased from 700 to 855, which means that we expanded our reach to a certain point.

After analyzing the data from our Instagram followers, the statistics of our audience are very close to what we would expect them to be. It is really nice to see that the ratio between female and male followers is almost 1:1, which implies that the interest in our team and in general STEM is spread evenly with regards to gender. The age range of our audience is mainly people between the ages of 18-24, which is as expected, as we are a student team operating in a student city. Most of our followers reside in Leuven, according to our statistics, which is also as expected. 

By collaborating with other teams, especially on social media challenges, we were able to reach their audience and communicate our project idea to more people. For example, we participated in Aachen’s pluchy challenge, where several iGEM teams from all over the world took a picture with a pluchy of a microbe, increasing and strengthening the bonds between different iGEM teams.

We also wanted to expand on more social media platforms, to reach a wide audience. That is why we started a Tiktok account, where we posted videos related to iGEM and our team. The reason we chose to expand on Tiktok was because the videos that you produce can be recommended to many people, not just your followers, increasing your reach. This also makes science look fun for people that have never been in contact with it. We also reached out to other iGEM teams on the same platform, helping us form stronger connections with them.

MedTech Convention

In collaboration with the student organization Academics for Technology (AFT)), iGEM KU Leuven co-organizes the yearly MedTech convention that will take place on the 23rd of November 2022 at the university halls in Leuven.

With our MedTech Convention, we will focus on innovations in the healthcare sector. The event will kick off with five keynote speakers that will tell the story of their company and the products they are developing. They will also give insight into the impact of new technologies on their jobs and how they experience working in the rapidly evolving healthcare sector.

Afterwards, there is a walking dinner where attendees are given the opportunity to meet different companies that are developing innovative technologies in the field. At this networking event, there will be no less than 15 booths, each presenting their technologies and/or products. The goal is to keep it as interactive and informational as possible. Therefore, we incentivize the partners to occupy the booth with at least two employees that are involved in the technology or science, with a maximum of three people.

Our team's involvement in the organization of the event is from start to finish, with everything that comes with it like organizing, marketing, sponsoring, etc. The event itself is important for us since it's the partner event for our sponsors. In other words, if a sponsor exceeds a certain level in our sponsor packages, they are rewarded a booth at the convention.

Our main target audience is medicine and engineering students, however, other students interested in the topic are more than welcome. We are expecting around 300 students and we hope to inspire them with the keynotes and introduce them to the diverse parts of the healthcare sector.

For more information about our event, please visit the official MedTech convention website by clicking here.

Group T Takeover

It was a very nice experience showing our project and hard work to a larger audience. We will also document the week of the Grand Jamboree on Group T’s Instagram page as well!

Open Company Day

In order to present our project to a larger audience and to recruit new members for the upcoming teams, we attended the open company day hosted by Technovation Hub on the 1st of October, 2022. Technovation Hub is a non-profit organization that facilitates innovative, entrepreneurial and high-tech student projects. The open company day was intended to encourage the entrepreneurial mindset within STEM and to encourage more students of KU Leuven to join student teams or startups part of Technovation Hub. In our booth we had a poster of our project and team logo on display to increase our recognition within the university. We also had our team presentation on display, so that it would be easier for us to explain our project to people that approach our stand.

It was very interesting to see that the event was not only attended by students, but also by parents with their kids, who wanted to encourage their kids from a very young age to become entrepreneurial, and people over the age of 60 who were interested in learning about the current innovations in STEM. It was also very rewarding seeing attendees, and even experts in the field of medicine and oncology congratulate us on our project. We also managed to already start up our recruitment process for the next iGEM season, with very enthusiastic and motivated students signing up to apply for the next year.

Overall, it was very beneficial and insightful for us to join the open company day, not only for the communication of our project to the general public, but also to receive feedback from the attendees about our work.

Exeter Podcast

The iGEM team from Exeter invited us to participate in an episode of their podcast "The Test Tube Podcast”. We thought that this would be a great opportunity for us to not only bring more awareness to our project and our purpose, but also to gain a larger audience. The purpose of this podcast episode was to discuss inclusivity and the inclusivity award in iGEM. We each talked about the steps we were taking to make our project and our teams more inclusive and how important it is in the science world to highlight this problem. That is why we are so glad that the inclusivity award is an award in the iGEM competition, it would bring a lot more attention on this topic and encourage more teams to stay inclusive.

On the podcast, we discussed our own personal experiences with discrimination in STEM and on how we think inclusivity should be implemented better in STEM. We explained our opinion that it is important to teach kids from a very young age that they can pursue any career that they wish to pursue and we should show them role models in STEM of all genders and backgrounds to make them feel as though the possibilities are endless. The iGEM team from Exeter also clarified to us the steps they were taking towards inclusivity such as designing a pipette tip that is more suitable to use for people with disabilities. We also explained to them what we were doing towards inclusivity such as our own podcast “Science Despite the Odds”. We discussed the goal of our podcast which was to encourage other iGEM teams and the public in general to persevere, despite facing some challenges on the way.

It was a very pleasant talk of about an hour where we exchanged our opinions and ideas with the iGEM team from Exeter, helping us achieve our goal of forming stronger connections with other iGEM teams.

Interview with Veto Magazine

In early September, we were contacted by the magazine “veto” to have an article written about our team and our project in their latest issue. “Veto” is an independent student magazine that was founded in 1974 in the city of Leuven. “Veto” releases an issue every 2 weeks written by students with their target audience being the students of Leuven.

The purpose of their article on our team was to explain our project to the readers and to describe how our research over the summer was proceeding. They asked us about our experience in the lab and we showed them around the lab we are working in. They also asked us questions about iGEM itself and for an explanation of our project. They published the article in their magazine and also linked it on their Instagram page. It was a very pleasant experience having writers from “Veto” visit us in the lab and write about iGEM and our project, increasing the recognition of our brand within the city of Leuven and Belgium as a whole.

Surveys for Colorectal Cancer

Since our project is based around colorectal cancer, we decided to send out surveys to get a better understanding of our project and improve it as much as possible. We devided our survey into 3 different parts: patients of colorectal cancer, healthcare workers in this field, and the general public to be able to see what people in general know about colorectal cancer. The part of the survey targeting the patients focuses on how the patients feel during their treatment and their mental well-being. We asked questions like “Did you feel that your concerns were heard during treatment?” For the healthcare workers, we focused our questions mainly on the detection methods for colorectal cancer available and asking them their honest opinion on having a bacterial biosensor as a method of detection of colorectal cancer. For the general public, we asked questions that would help us understand what the people in general know about colorectal cancer and the symptoms that could help them recognize the presence of colorectal cancer.

In all sections of the surveys, we asked what people thought about the idea of taking a pill that contained a bacterial biosensor to detect colorectal cancer, to get an idea of the public perception on our project. We got answers mostly from Belgium and Spain and even some answers from doctors and it surprised us that so many people were willing to take an engineered pill. The results were discussed and exchanged with iGEM Wageningen, since they also worked on colorectal cancer and also had a survey sent around in the Netherlands. This way we could see if the public opinion in different countries is the same.

Results:

“In order to get a thorough notion on the perspective of different groups of people in colorectal cancer (CRC) and their opinion on ingesting a bacterial biosensor for CRC, we conducted a survey divided into 3 sections aiming for healthcare workers, patients of CRC and general public.

In the section aimed at healthcare workers, we focused on their opinion on current detection methods and the possibility of a genetically engineered bacteria as a detection method. Around 60% of them considered today’s methods not sufficient because of invasiveness, non-specificity and cost. 72% of them would recommend a pill containing the biosensor to their patients. However, they would first like to get more details such as: cost, side effects, efficiency and biosafety.

We only managed to get one patient with CRC (Spanish survey), who considered their concerns were not heard during treatment/diagnosis and was willing to take our biosensor, believing it would be efficient and present less side effects than conventional methods. They would like to know when should they take it and if its dependent on the symptoms.

Regarding the general public, vast majority was familiar with CRC (from friends, family who had it), even though their knowledge about it wasn’t quite accurate (location, symptoms, prevention). A great number of them (56%) consider they would need more information beforehand in order to take our biosensor, the rest (44%) would take it nevertheless. That is interesting, considering only 23% of them knew what a biosensor is. Big majority believes it would be efficient and present less side effects than conventional methods.

Things we didn’t mention and people considered relevant: study CRC trigger, asked if it was genetic, contraindications of taking our biosensor while having other pathologies, long-term side effects, different effect in gender/family history/habits.”

Education

To read more about our work in education go here: