Work/Life Balance is now an essential and important factor in our lives. But in the case of cell-related labs, this element is sometimes pushed back a little. Researchers who need to culture cells often change their working hours to match the cells' conditions, so they even go to the lab on weekends to see the cells. Also, as a result of limited access to laboratory activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining live cells that require 24/7 operations has been difficult. But these labor-intensive working schedules make researchers unable to concentrate on their research and also contribute to their poor quality of life.

From other recent articles on the subject, it’s clear that scientists have many different ideas of how to achieve Work/Life balance and on whether or not it even exists.

Dr. Marco Emanuele Favretto Department of Biological Sciences, University of Chester said that “I have been successful so far [and] I definitely could have done more, but I am a happy person. The secret? Tell your boss that you want to have a life and you can’t dedicate yourself 24/7 to science, or you will burn out in a few months.”

So, to find out the relationship between Work, Life and Work Efficiency, we conducted the following survey to the artificial cell group of Sogang University's biological interfaces group.

As you can see in the survey, the researchers expected that improving the work environment through automation will help not only the quality of life but also the research.

Goal 4 of SDGs is Quality Education. The literature related to sustainability and higher education continues to develop, building various areas of interest. As Figure shows, sustainability also has a relationship with education. However, in developing countries without infrastructure, there is bound to be an absence of education, which is associated with national competitiveness.

Also, in the pandemic situation caused by COVID-19, students were not able to conduct their own experiments. They just have to look at the experimental videos that the assistant did, or do the computer simulations. Through this insufficient level of experimental education, students could not have a deep understanding of the experiment and could not discuss their own results.

With the SDGs goal of 'Leaving No One Behind'', we wanted to provide a quality education through SynBioBot, even in areas where the experimental practice is not possible due to lack of equipment, or in the event of another pandemic situation.

Therefore, our team worked on the project with the following two goals.

While performing Human Practice activities, we considered the above goals and SDGs in mind. We got a lot of feedback. In addition, some activities have allowed us to coordinate our values and feedback along with the 'DDCC process' of our Engineering success to make the project more complete.

The S.M.A.R.T Competition is an international competition to present and spread the vision and plans to create a sustainable future by recognizing and solving problems facing the international community. The S.M.A.R.T Sustainable Technology Competition is an international competition to present and spread vision and plans to create a sustainable future by recognizing and solving problems facing the international community.

To solve the educational problems facing our society due to COVID-19 and lack of infrastructure, we participated in the competition under the theme of experimental education through remote robot systems. Based on the results of conducting remote experimental education with Indonesian students, we presented a vision of our project to contribute to the international community and finally won the Director of UNICEF's prize.

If you are curious about the S.M.A.R.T competition in more detail, please check the link below.

Communication

Some of the questions we have received from the judges of the SMART competition, which consists of about 30 people, are as follows.

Among the above questions, our team kept thinking about #2. In fact, our team members know basic computer languages, so we thought this system would be enough for many people to use. Although Python is an accessible computer language, it is difficult for users to handle. We realized that. This is not in line with one of our important values, SDGs' Goal 4, 'Increasing inclusive and equitable quality educational opportunities.' In response, we concluded that it would be better for students to order the desired motion with a simple button rather than directly coding the robot.

Therefore, our team has changed how final users interact with SynBioBot to a user-friendly GUI. The GUI development process was conducted through the DDCC process of Engineering success.

ICEAS is an international forum to discuss various topics related to appropriate technology. This conference provides a forum to present state-of-the-art technologies and application cases in related fields to respond to global issues such as climate change, COVID-19, cyclical systems, ODA, and ESG. Through this opportunity, we hoped to have an opportunity to exchange knowledge as well as promote international and multidisciplinary cooperation. During the poster presentation, we were able to talk to various experts and get some advice from them.

At this point, we found that not all experiments go according to a common process. Not all laboratories can be in the same environment. If SynBioBot gives students the autonomy to conduct their own experiments from the experimental table setting stage, it can adapt to the environmental requirements of people in different environments. It means SynBioBot can provide a quality education that has not been seen in previous online experimental classes. So we used ArUcomarker to process image data so that people could design and conduct the experiments they wanted. Enabling faster modification of the working space. The robot's Teachdata method of storing and executing accurate coordinate values requires an analog process of storing the exact location whenever you want to edit the position data.

However, with ArUco maker, we can quickly reflect the experiments that users want by simply adjusting only dx, dy, and dz at the code. The development of these vision controls was also achieved through our DDCC process. Now, people can place the experimental equipment they want in our working space and conduct their own experiments by SynBioBot!

EBPH activity was for education and science communication, but it had a great influence on the advance of our project. EBPH(Evidence-Based Practice with High shcool) is a new method of education that attempts to collaborate between researchers and students by applying Evidence-Based Practice, one of the existing methods of science communication. We believed that a deep level of education and collaboration would develop students' ability to solve problems by using their knowledge. Furthermore, this new method of education was also an activity that could contribute to SDGs Goal 4: Quality Education. Through this activity, we were able to not only cultivate next-generation robot-synbio researchers but also achieve unexpected good results for our project. Through regular meetings, Sogang_Korea and EBPH teams produced various supporting parts, including the design of pipette case that allows sophisticated pipetting with simple grip movements. And some of these parts have been registered as patents.

If you are curious about more detailed EBPH activities, please check the link below.

Education

At this point, we felt the need for an interim check.

We conducted interviews with the following experts.

First, we wanted to get advice from our two PIs who are experts in the field of Synthetic biology and Robots.

For Professor Shin Kwan-woo, who leads the artificial cell group, provided a presentation focusing on the process of robot growing actual cells. For Professor Jeong Seok-hwan, who leads Robotic system group, provided a presentation about the whole robot system. And we showed both professors the GUI system that we developed through SMART and ICEAS.

Here are feedbacks and advices we got:

Professor Shin Kwanwoo

He confirmed that there were no major errors in the experimental process that we adjusted for the robot.

Professor Jung Seokhwan

He gave me feedback on supporting parts and robot control that it would be possible to implement more detailed movements with additional sensors.

Both

Through their common feedback, the real-time robot drive screen was displayed on the GUI.

After GUI development, our team wanted to link our robot system to a Start-Up. Expanding our goal to start-up has made us ask fundamental questions in terms of business.

"Compared to factory automation through a variety of robots, what is the advantage of replacing all processes with one robot arm?"

We have not given a clear answer to that. In fact, the robot business is now very focused on automation. However, this process of automation consists of many robots. They conduct relatively simple processes, such as lifting and moving objects. This is because factory automation robot systems are better economically and more sophisticated than a single robot system that performs multiple actions.

Our team acknowledged our weak identity in business. The advantage we can offer with SynBioBot is that we can replace people entirely, automate processes, and provide a quality education where there is no infrastructure. However, with only these benefits, it is difficult to achieve the 'economic benefits' that are essential to start a business.

We decided to visit 'Onrobot', a company that actually works in the robot business, to get some advice on this. We introduced SynBioBot, which can conduct complex processes like cell culturing and lentiviral transduction.

The feedback from On-Robot is as follow:

Changing the incubator opening motion to an automatic door

About the feedback, we could automatically open the door through Arduino and so on, but we thought it would be more educational for robots to reproduce human movements completely.

Here are some tips from Onrobot.

The contact with Onrobot, which is currently in the field of robots, was a great experience to hear about the strengths and weaknesses of our ideas when they were linked to start-ups, and the various possibilities that these ideas of cell-robot harmony would bring.

Through a series of meetings as above, our Sogang_Korea team decided to expand our plan to start a business. Based on our attempt to combine robots and cells, the above club is based on the theme of 'Remote Synthetic Biology Experimental Automation & Education Robot' We officially applied for the international start-up club on campus and were selected.You can learn more about our start-up plans in implementation.

If you are curious about the start-up plans in more detail, please check the link below.

Implementation

The opportunity to attract public engagement was community service for elementary school students. We visited SD KANISIUS DUWET in Indonesia. We thought it would be better for elementary school students to increase their understanding of the cell. Therefore, we conducted enjoyable activities to introduce living cells.

We held the 'Synthetic Biology Debate Competition' with other universities and high school teams in Korea, as follows, to promote synthetic biology and our projects to more people.

Goal 17 of SDGs aims to strengthen the means of implementation to achieve the goals and to promote global partnerships for sustainable development. Through this opportunity, we formed the 'Korea Synthetic Biological Association' with other teams to enable continuous collaboration in the future and to promote synthetic biology in Korea.

Cell culture experiments and lentiviral transduction experiments were taught to students in Indonesia to find out if there would be actual educational effects. Five students from the Department of Pharmacy and Chemical Education participated, and they performed protocols step-by-step corresponding to cell seeding and lentiviral transduction in real time through our GUI. They were students with experience in learning basic biological knowledge through textbooks. However, through this program, they raised the animal cell HEK293T. They said that they could understand and accept the protocol better by doing experiments through the robot arm. For example, by actually seeing the cells float after adding trypsin, they deeply understood the role of trypsin: detaching cells from the plate before centrifuging.

All five students said that it was an interesting experimental class and helped them understand the experimental process.