Introduction

Informing people about our project !MPACT (Modular, Personalized Autoimmune Cell Therapy) was an important aspect of our iGEM year. We wanted to create awareness for our project in which we succeeded! It is the mission of all iGEM teams to educate the overall society about the fast growing field that is synthetic biology. To achieve this, communication is key, as there is still a lot to learn from society itself. How do people react to our project? what are our strengths and weaknesses? What should we improve on? These are questions we explored. Scientists should not forget this, because communicating the accomplishments of iGEM teams increases the trustworthiness of synthetic biology. As a result, an educational, safe and innovation driven environment.

Reaching out to the overall public can, and should be done in multiple ways. Therefore, we developed an impact scale which describes the impact our team has on each different audience group we approached.

Through our research on human practices, published on our human practices wiki page, we concluded that scientific communication is crucial, particularly when creating new therapies that are intended to become commercially successful.

A continuous flow of information through scientists themselves at all age levels is essential. The results from this study on ethics and the opinions of the general public on synbio can be found in the human practices section of our partnership page. We conducted science education and communication at many age levels in society for this reason. We accomplished this, among other things, by promoting our team and project on social media, setting up promotion through the Technical University of Eindhoven and publishing articles, presenting at events, and organizing various workshops.

To broaden our impact, we furthermore educated different audience groups. First, we organized a challenge day for more than one hundred high school students at which we introduced the students to the concept of synthetic biology through practical assignments. Second, we taught elementary school children about the basic principles of DNA. Lastly, we organized a workshop for students of the Technical University of Eindhoven. For more information, read below. The detailed explanation of these events can be found on our education award wiki page.

Conclusion

Synthetic biology is a rapidly emerging field that is creating new life-forms, new treatments and new products. It has the potential to improve our quality of life and help us solve many world issues. As such, our team has been working on !MPACT, a proof of concept for a Modular Personalized Autoimmune Treatment starting with the application towards ANCA associated vasculitis. As an iGEM team we are aware that communication is important and that there are many opportunities to lower the threshold for others to learn about synthetic biology.

In order to accomplish this, we devised different ways of science communication, developed and implemented education of different groups of society and worked on outreach materials related to synthetic biology. We developed the iGEM Impact Scale to rate the impact that our team has. The Impact Scale is a tool that helped us understand what we did and quantifies the impact of our actions. Therefore, we recommend other iGEM teams to use the tool as well in the future.

With everything that we published on this wiki page we tried to create awareness of synthetic biology, set up collaborations with other institutions, educate people on synthetic biology and improved our own pitching and science communication skills. Even though each of our actions have a specific impact, we encourage other iGEM teams and researchers to keep on communicating about what they do as broadly as possible. This is needed because the field of synthetic biology is expanding and we noticed that the world is curious and enthusiastic to learn about this field. Lastly, we hope to be an inspiration for others to make impact with synthetic biology, through science communication.

Demo day

16-05-2022

Our team took part in a demo day event hosted by the Eindhoven University of Technology's Health community at the start of the development of our project. We vocally presented our project, supported by two posters with information about our team and project, among other student teams working on health-related projects. An excellent chance to introduce our project to other students and academic professionals for the first time.

It was enjoyable to share our project, create awareness of synthetic biology and receive thoughts and feedback. We gained knowledge on how to simplify our project description for students and academics from different academic backgrounds. Lastly, we used the feedback to simplify our pitch to reach the general public and even more students from other disciplines.

Lecture talk during the master introduction week

30-08-2022

Annually, our university, organizes a Master Kick-off to welcome incoming master students, both Dutch and international. During the three-day Kick-off event, the master students are introduced to their program, and they get the chance to network with local high-tech companies and teams. We introduced our iGEM team to the new Biomedical Engineering students during this Kick-off. We provided a 10-minute presentation about the iGEM competition, our project in detail, and what it means to be a member of team iGEM. We received a lot of positive comments, and hope to have inspired these students to enter the iGEM contest in the future!

We are very thankful to our university for giving us the opportunity to present at the Master Kick-off and the recruitment events mentioned one section above, as well as for supporting our iGEM project!

Infomail

09-03-2022

Protagoras is the Biomedical Engineering study association at our University (Eindhoven University of Technology). At the time, all of our team members were part of this study association. In March 2022, our team was still looking for new members and therefore we promoted our team and the iGEM competition through the infomail of this association. This infomail was send to more than 1000 Biomedical Engineering students!

Cursor

07-09-2022

At the end of the summer in which we performed most of our lab work, one of our team members was interviewed by Cursor. Cursor is an online magazine that covers news that occurs at our university. In the article we talk about our project and participation in the iGEM competition. Furthermore, we elaborated on the two events that we organize as a team, the Mini Jamboree Benelux and the Challenge Day for high school students. The Mini Jamboree Benelux is a yearly meet-up for the Benelux iGEM teams and the Challenge Day was an event for high school students that we organized for the first time. Since this article is mostly read by students and staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), we saw this as an opportunity to spread to word about our project and our events.

Protatype

To be released

The TU/e's Department of Biomedical Engineering's study association, SvBMT Protagoras, allowed us to write an article for their association magazine called ‘Protatype’. By doing so, we have the ability to reach out to future biomedical engineers with an in-depth look at the biomedical aspects of our project. This article is to be published in their next magazine.

Challenge day

14-09-2022

On the 14th of September, our team organized the Challenge Day. The first time in iGEM TU Eindhoven history to do so. Around 100 high school students of the levels 5 and 6 VWO (the highest form of high school education in the Netherlands) came to our university to learn about synthetic biology. These students are the engineers of the future and we wanted to make them aware of the possibilities within synthetic biology. Besides the learning experience for the students, we had a learning experience ourselves. We learned how to organize an event and how to inspire the new, young generation about the possibilities of this growing science field.

The day consisted of a theoretical exercise and several practical exercises. For the first part, students had to make their own synthetic biology project and visualize this through a poster. At the end of the day they had to defend their project to a critical jury at a poster market. For the practical exercises, students went into the lab and had a tour around the university. More about this exciting, inspirational day can be read on the education award page. This workshop has received 4 stars, because it had a large impact on the public that was new and seemed unreachable. Since, for the students, it was their first encounter with the TU/e campus and the subject synthetic biology.

DNA lesson at primary school

16-05-2022 and 20-06-2022

On the 16th of May and the 20th of June we gave a lesson about DNA at two different primary schools. This was done twice, making it possible to implement the feedback we received the first time. More information about the primary school lectures regarding the feedback can be found in the engineering success page. This way, others can learn from our experience as well.

The children listened attentively during the lecture, participated in a small educational game and were given the opportunity to ask as many questions at they wanted. More information about our experience and advice for future iGEM teams giving a lecture can be found on the education award page. This workshop has received three stars, because this had an impact that was new to our team.

TU/e contest

03-2022 -- 06/2022

Our team took part in the TU/e Contest, the TU/e competition for student teams, from early March through June 23. A competition organized by the TU/e innovation space, a community that develops and facilitates interdisciplinary hands-on challenge-based learning on engineering design and entrepreneurship. “TU/e Contest is a nice opportunity for developing yourself as an engineer of the future, by improving your entrepreneurial competences. Together with the partners in the network, TU/e innovation Space will help you on your way from dream to demo to world market.” says Isabelle Reyman, scientific director of TU/e innovation space, which exactly describes how our team experienced this competition!

Participating in this contest helped us in several ways. For instance, through workshops on ideation and project validation, we were able to reflect on our project idea, as well as improve our pitching skills. Workshops on our business model and business plan helped us improve the entrepreneurial side of our project. You can see our business plan and business model on our entrepreneurship wiki page. It is an interesting page if you are curious to see how !MPACT can be further developed into a successful therapeutic.

Moreover, we pitched our project in several ways to several partners, including the companies Novartis, Organon, Neways Electronics, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Medtronic, which provided us with valuable feedback. Participating in the contest enabled us to meet these interesting companies and stakeholders in the first place. Our human practices wiki page describes how we integrated this into our project.

Finally, in the live broadcasted finale against other student teams we pitched for a critical jury from different disciplines. The audience live at the finale and at home massively voted on our project, leading to us winning the audience award! You can view the video of our one-minute pitch that led to our success below!

Recruitment events

01-04-2022, 23-08-2022 and 30-08-2022

We are constantly making the effort to meet new students and introduce them to our team. To do so, we for example participated in three of our university's recruitment events. One was intended for master students, one was designated for bachelor students and one was open to both. We were given a booth at these events or were required to bring our own exhibit, and we informed interested students about our team and the iGEM competition. We always enjoy it, and it helps spread the word about our team and the iGEM competition across the campus of our university!

Alumni drink iGEM TU Eindhoven

14-09-2022

As we are the tenth generation of iGEM TU Eindhoven, we organized an alumni drink for all the previous iGEM TU Eindhoven Teams. This goes back to 2012! We kicked-off the drink by interviewing two previous team members (one from the 2012 team, and one from the 2021 team). During this open conversation, we talked about the evolution of iGEM. Hoping to inspire and bring back memories. This event stimulated our team, as well as the visitors to connect with other iGEM TU Eindhoven generations and talk about our common interest, iGEM and synthetic biology.

Mini jamboree

18-10-2022

The mini jamboree is an annual event, organized by our team. This year is no different. We organized the mini jamboree of 2022 where each year the event grows larger and more professional. The Mini Jamboree is a spin-off from the official worldwide Grand Jamboree and takes place just before the Grand Jamboree. A perfect opportunity for iGEM teams from the Netherlands and Belgium to practice their pitch one more time in front of a big audience and a jury. Allowing them to fine-tune their pitch and receive feedback from scientists and students from the field of synthetic biology. Interested to read more information about the Mini Jamboree? Check our Collaborations page.