This year, our team felt that it was of particular importance to establish a two-way dialogue with new communities, and spread awareness on the concept of synthetic biology and how it is applied in real life. We hope that through our several interactive workshops, we have engaged more students and encouraged them to get involved in the field.
mMEDCON is a Slovak non-governmental organization which empowers youth toward choosing medical professions and increases their interest in medicine. One of mMEDCON´s projects is an international competition called KASMED. Every two months, students receive a problem set that they solve and send back. At the end of the competition, the best students are invited to the KASMED medical summer academy. At the academy, the students attend lectures and workshops led by doctors and healthcare professionals. At this year’s academy, the participants came from 10 different high schools and two different countries. One of this year’s speakers was a member of the NYUAD iGEM team, Zuzana Lukáčová, who hosted a synthetic biology workshop. During the workshop, she introduced the students to synthetic biology, its applications and future directions. Furthermore, she has also introduced the iGEM competition and provided the students with all the necessary information and materials needed for them to bring the idea to their high schools. Zuzana has also introduced this year´s NYUAD project: the biosensor-based device used for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease, as well as explained the need for the device. The presentation was followed by an open discussion with the students, in which they discussed possible applications of synthetic biology to some of the pressing issues in the world. The second part of the discussion concerned the moral and ethical considerations one needs to keep in mind when using synthetic biology tools. The last part of the workshop was practical: the students had the opportunity to try out the online simulation by Labexchange – an online educational platform from Harvard University in order to learn more about the molecular techniques used in the process of transfection.
A collaboration with mMEDCON, a Slovak non-governmental organization, allowed students from 10 different schools and two different countries to learn more about synthetic biology. Apart from receiving a lecture on synthetic biology and its applications, students also engaged in discussions regarding real-life applications of synthetic biology, as well as the potential moral and ethical issues associated with it. Lastly, the students also tried out online simulation to learn more about transfection.
On Friday 23rd of September, the NYUAD iGEM team organized synthetic biology workshops for high school students from Cranleigh School Abu Dhabi interested in bioengineering and synthetic biology. During the workshops, our team presented the basic concepts of synthetic biology, introduced the iGEM competition, and talked about our project and the possibility of the high school team to propose their own project. After that, our team introduced the main objective of this workshop which was a hands-on workshop on bacteria transformation. Firstly, there was a visual presentation about all the steps that are going to happen during the lab with explanations of why and when each step is being done. Additionally, each group received a lab manual with a detailed explanation of bacteria transformation and steps performed during the experiment. By doing that our team made sure that high school students know and understand every step of the experiment and the significance for successful results as well as applications of the concept in a wider biotech context. There was also a time for students to ask our facilitators questions and clarify concepts that were not clearly understood or needed more explanation. All the materials and resources were later shared with the students to use in their club meetings. The students were familiarized with all the necessary terms and most important concepts of genetic cloning. After the presentation, under the supervision of the iGEM team and our faculty supervisor, high school students had a chance to perform bacterial transformation themselves. In addition, our team performed the experiment the day before such that the students were able to observe the results (fluorescence of bacteria) under UV light.
Cranleigh School Abu Dhabi students visited NYU Abu Dhabi before for other science workshops. By conducting the workshops our team hoped to encourage students to form a team and join the iGEM competition next year. By providing those opportunities we hope to sustain the connection with high school students in the region that we hope will encourage their curiosity for synthetic biology and will lead to exciting projects in the future.
Between October 1-2, 2022 our iGEM team along with the Center for Cybersecurity and Bioengineering program in the Division of Engineering at NYUAD organized a two-day biochip hackathon for high school and university students from Abu Dhabi. The event was initiated by a seminar introducing the participants to the concept of microfluidic chips, their manufacturing process, and their applications. Next, the students took part in practical workshops where they got to learn more about the science behind microfluidics and biochips using Fluidigm Biochip as an example. Moreover, the participants learned step-by-step how simple chips are made from PBMS and practiced inspecting the chips using an optical microscope. In the second part of the biochip hackathon, students were divided into groups and a number of resources (such as research papers, articles, videos, and websites) on biochips and their manufacturing process were shared with the teams in order to further develop their understanding of the production workflow. Based on that and their individual research the students were given 24h to come up with possible attacks on the biochips that would most likely go undetected during post-manufacturing checking sessions (such as deliberately deteriorating the quality of the samples can possibly produce false-negative COVID-19 results). As a final project, they were asked to create a short video presentation presenting their attack ideas and potential solutions.
Overall the submissions received were of very high quality and showed students’ good understanding of the concept behind biochips. Moreover, after the competition, the participants gave us very positive feedback often emphasizing that workshops were the first time they had an opportunity to work with biochips which they found very interesting and engaging. Furthermore, the objectives of the hackathon were closely related to our NYUAD iGEM project, and going further we hope to look into potential implementations of the solutions proposed.
