On June 22, 2002, we gave a seminar presentation introducing and discussing synthetic biology as well as iGEM to the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering program (WYSE) students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The WYSE program is meant to expose pre-college students interested in STEM to different areas of engineering through demonstrations, lab tours, classroom presentations, hands-on activities, and interactions with various students, staff, and professors in those fields. We presented to a total of three groups of students. First, we introduced iGEM and synthetic biology, as well as briefly our project with them. In our talk, we also discussed with the students the potential uses of synthetic biology and the bioethics of certain synthetic biology techniques, such as the ethics of genetically engineered babies. The students listened carefully and actively participated in the interaction, discussing their questions with the team and discussing their views on ethical issues in biology.
On September 7, we gave an online presentation discussing our project and synthetic biology to an audience of the general members of the Urbana-Champaign community. Science Cafe is a collaboration between the IGB and Beckman Institute here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to share research being done on campus to the community. During our presentation, we introduced iGEM and gave a brief description of synthetic biology. Shortly after, we discussed the problem we are tackling with our project, Nitrate Runoff, and how it has affected Lake Decatur and is persistent in the fertilizer industry. As a result we chose Curli Capture as our solution and informed the audience of our project and our goal. We answered questions and shared our experience working as a team for iGEM.
Thanks for the collaborator teams and the sponsor of our university
