From the very beginning of our project, we wanted to make sure that we integrated inclusivity in every aspect of our work. With every outreach we hosted or were invited to, and with every collaboration we planned, we tried to implement inclusivity. Some of our work in inclusivity includes our workshop on unconcious bias at the Technovation Hub event, the podcast "Science Despite the Odds", the fundraising event for Stop Darmkanker and promotional video.
One of the first examples of our work in inclusivity is the workshop on the topic Inclusion and diversity in STEM - Unconscious Bias (UB). We truly believe that science still has a long way to go when it comes to being inclusive towards people of all genders, races, ages and abilities. That is why, when we were asked to host a workshop at the Technovation Hub event, we knew that we wanted to base our workshop on unconscious bias in the workplace. Technovation Hub is a non-profit organization that facilitates innovative, entrepreneurial and high-tech student projects.
Our workshop started off by explaining to the attendees what unconscious bias is and what are the different types of unconscious bias. We explained that UB is the stereotypes, prejudices and preferences that cause us to favor a person, thing or a group. A natural process in the brain allows us to filter out the most important inputs we get all day long, which is called fast thinking. When this same fast thinking procedure is used while hiring a suitable candidate for a job or diagnosing a disease, the consequences are vast. We explained the different types of unconscious bias, attribution bias, gender bias, etc. via an interactive demonstration where we asked the audience to stand up and then sit down if they had observed or experienced the example given. We also included a quiz in which we demonstrated unconscious bias through riddles and questions about equality statistics.
At the end of the workshop, we provided the audience with resources: these included books, podcasts and published articles. During the networking evening after the workshop, we had interesting discussions with people from the audience, people that did not follow our workshop and also the people that helped us with designing the workshop.
It was very interesting, not only for the audience, but also for us to research the impact of unconscious bias in the field of STEM, making us want to further investigate this phenomenon to hopefully make the science world more inclusive.
We got the idea to start this podcast when our wet lab work was going a bit slow. We knew that it wasn't just our team that faces some unexpected hurdles throughout our project, which is why we started our podcast "Science Despite the Odds". Each participating iGEM recorded a podcast episode about a scientist who overcame adversity to become a great contributor in their respective field of work. The iGEM teams that participated in our podcast were: GEM Tec Monterrey_GDL, iGEM Tec Chihuahua, iGEM Patras, iGEM UMA, iGEM NCKU, iGEM UNSW, iGEM NYCU, iGEM Ionis, iGEM Kyushu University.
It was very nice hearing from iGEM teams all over the world, who were excited to collaborate with us on a project that celebrated scientists from all over the world for their perseverance despite the circumstances. It was also very interesting for us to learn about resilient scientists of all different backgrounds and field of study, who had done tremendous work despite facing challenges on the way. For example, we decided to dedicate our podcast about Katherine Johnson, who despite the racial injustice and segregation present at the time in the US, became one of the best NASA mathematicians of all time. Our goal with this podcast was to really highlight scientists that had faced challenges, whether financial or racial and gender discrimination, to become amazing scientists, thus promoting inclusivity in STEM. You listen to our podcast here.
Since our project is based on creating a bacterial biosensor to detect colorectal cancer, we wanted to bring awareness to our cause by hosting a fundraising event for the organization Stop Darmkanker. Stop Darmkanker is an organization that was founded in 2009, to help bring awareness and raise money for colorectal cancer research.
When we started planning this event, we knew that we wanted it to be as inclusive as possible to people of all ages. That is why we hosted several different workshops within the event, each aimed at a different age group. We had a creative workshop aimed at children, where they had the opportunity to work on small science experiments such as creating a lava lamp and making slime. We had a workshop called "What is a biosensor" aimed at people over the age of 50. The purpose of this workshop was to inform older generations about modern technologies by also including an interactive exercise, thus promoting inclusivity in STEM. We also held our workshop Inclusion and diversity in STEM - Unconscious Bias (UB) which was aimed at attendees of all ages.
Overall, we wanted to make sure that science is available to people of all ages by having workshops aimed at different age groups. Our purpose was to emphasize to the attendees of our event that is never too early or late to get into STEM.
While working on our promotional video, we knew we wanted to make it accessible to people all over the world in order to spread awareness about colorectal cancer and to also bring light to our project. In addition, since we are a team of students with diverse backgrounds and speak various languages, we decided to make our subtitles available in 11 different languages. Those languages are: Arabic, Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. This way, we help in spreading the wonders of synthetic biology to people all over the world, encouraging inclusivity in that aspect.
