Team:Leiden/Engagement

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Events

Synthetic biology brings great opportunities for innovative applications, tackling major societal problems. However, as with all applications, they are made to be used by people. Therefore, it is vital to keep these people in mind during the design process and to have them on board with our plans. To that end, we are engaging with all people and organizations associated to our project by visiting a variety of events. Scroll down to see what activities we have participated in. You can read more about the ideas behind our awareness campaign on our Education and Public Engagement page.

14/05/2018

RIVM: Safe by Design

To kickstart our brainstorming on the Human Practices behind our project, we met with the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and with the Rathenau Institute, tasked with supporting the public and political discussion of science. During the day we pitched our idea to the RIVM and other Dutch iGEM teams. Afterwards, 7 experts from the fields of policy & law, societal impact, safety & security, business and ethics enriched us with their knowledge and thoughts on our project. This provided us with many valuable insights and helped us to firmly include Human Practices into all the steps of our project. Additionally, the day provided a nice opportunity to meet up with the other Dutch iGEM teams, allowing us to exchange ideas and get to know each other better.

17/05/2018

Industry Day

The city of Leiden has a rich history of scientists and artists engaging their work to find solutions to problems and explore the scientific and ethical boundaries of curiosity. At Industry day, we kept that tradition alive by bringing scientists and artist into one room and displaying our work. iGEM Leiden team member, Germaine Aalderink, had prepared two large pieces of agar art for the occasion, using colored bacteria as ‘paint’. Sadly, bacterial infections took hold on the large homemade agar containers leading to the art being overgrown. Fortunately we were able to use this loss to further emphasize the need for antibiotics and to raise awareness for the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
We also had the opportunity to have discussions with fascinating artists. A favorite was Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a biologist and artist who uses his art as a medium to raise awareness for an endangered squid species. Hiemstra made us realize that - although graphs are a scientific method to show a negative trend - art is a way to emotionally involve the viewer an make them truly realise the problem and the need to solve it.

Picture by Gabi van Ingen.

17/05/2018

Science meets Business Café

The Science Meets Business Café is a monthly meeting of scientists and bioscience company representatives, with the goal of stimulating cooperation between them. During the final Café event before the summer break, we presented our project and opened the discussion with scientists and businesspeople alike. It was motivating to receive many positive reactions to our project and the subsequent drinks allowed us to delve into further details with interested individuals. The afternoon provided us valuable new contacts and allowed us to further spread our ideas and the added value of synthetic biology.

02/06/2018

Museum Night

The Leiden Museum Night is an annual event which promotes the visiting of museums. During the night, the museums of Leiden open their doors and offer special workshops and lectures. This year, we stood in the Botanical garden where we gave a workshop in agar art. Our goal was to make people more familiar with bacteria and take away some of the stigma surrounding them. The workshop was appropriate for all ages and we got very positive feedback from both children and elders. Besides this we had a stand with our poster and flyers where we explained our project and the issue of antibiotics resistance to the visitors. We had great conversations and got to understand the fears people have when it comes to GMO's and bacteria. We were very glad to see that many people were interested in our project and supported our work. The night was a great success and the many pictures of brightly colored bacteria drawings warmed our heart.

16/08/2018

Workshop at EL CID Leiden University Introduction Week

On the 16th of July, fresh Leiden University students were already on their fourth day of the El Cid introduction week. During this day, we had the opportunity to teach students about our project, synthetic biology and the threat of antibiotic resistance. At our stand during the El Cid symposium, we provided the opportunity for students to draw using colourful bacteria, while enthusiastic students were allowed to tackle our newly created “Escape the Resistance” escape room game. It was great fun to engage with the future students of our university and show them all the amazing things we got to do as an iGEM team. Lastly, the day provided us a great opportunity to gather feedback on our Read more about this feedback and our escape room on our Education & Public Engagement page escape room game.

26/09/2018

Workshop at Da Vinci College High School

Our final test of our “Escape the Resistance” workshop was performed at the local High School: Davinci College. Here, we taught a large group of final year high school students about the possibilities of synthetic biology, and the dangers of antibiotic resistance. It was interesting to learn that most students were not that worried about antibiotic resistance, even though they were already aware of the problem. They stated their main reason for this was because they couldn’t do anything about it. Therefore, we were happy to learn them how any member of society can help tackle the antibiotic resistance crisis through better handling of our current antibiotics.