Team:NJU-China/Public Engagement

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Best Education & Public Engagement

In this part, we organized a special lecture for the high school students in Nanjing Foreign Language School on International Alzheimer’s Day with NFLS iGEM team, which included introduction of IGEM, Synthetic biology, our project and experiments in a plain and vivid way. We also organized simulating experience for Alzheimer's disease and autism, which highly improve the public understanding about brain disease and the possibilities of synthetic biology and appeal more love and care to patients of neuronal diseases.

In the special lecture for high school students, we used logical relationship of simple experimental parts to show them what synthetic biology and iGEM competition is and how we perform our subject. When introducing, we focused on the tortuous process of our project design and the improvement according to the result of every attempt. We discussed with high school students how to make an affective element for certain purpose. The conversation discussed the possible treatment for brain disease with synthetic biology and also sparked students’ scientific curiosity.

In the next part, several students volunteered to experience simulating experiments held to enable them feel the difficulties caused by neurological diseases about our subject. We provided VR glasses for them and they could use these special glasses to watch certain special videos which recorded visual world of patients with autism or Alzheimer’s disease. For example, a girl student saw what a little boy with autism saw with VR glasses. The boy in the screen was sitting in a mall with his mum, while the girl student said she felt uncomfortable and helpless throughout the whole process. “I’m trying to imitate others and spare no effort to contact with the outside, but nobody understands me.” Because the boy with autism could feel every subtle change of light and sound and enlarge them, he was easy to become anxious and restless. Worse, people with autism couldn’t communicate with others so that nobody could relieve them, in which case, they were caught in a vicious circle.

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Here are some feedbacks from students in NFLS:

i) Xth: This activity opened a window of synthetic biology for me, bringing the advanced technology close to our everyday life: experiments in the lab can actually make a difference to cancer patients, children with inabilities and even to ourselves. The lecturers from both team NFLS and NJU spoke in a very simple but professional way. More importantly, their collaboration made the introduction comprehensive and diversified.

ii) Szh: Though tough to learn, biology, as a branch of science, explains many natural laws, which help us get a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the world. Some biological knowledge can be applied to our daily life and brings to us more convenience. During this workshop, the speakers explained to us profound theories concerning biology in simple terms, while the experience of VR enabled us to get access to the mental world of autistic children. It is really a fantastic meeting, together with the rich offering of a delicious snack.

iii)Yax: Honestly speaking, I am not the kind of girl who is very into biology. The complicated structures and processes drove me mad from time to time. This activity, however, won the interest of mine. Unlike the traditional classes, the speakers made good use of technology while successfully getting close to our daily lives. This made all the process not hard to understand. I’d say that everything was pretty interesting when you viewed the world in a positive way. I got the precious chance of experiencing the life of children with autism under virtual reality. Every scene was so real - the desire to be noticed, fear, loneliness, loss, sadness, loneliness and Great Depression filled my mind and heart. Heart broke into pieces on the floor. I would never expect the kids to suffer from all this. Crowded parties, happy people talking with smiles on their faces, bottles striking hard, food emitting smell, and ME-in the corner of the room, alone, crying in my heart. I was so down that I was about to shout out to the people nearby, I wanted to, but I couldn’t.” That’s hopeless, but, maybe I should hopeless.

We NJU-China believe that it is possible to put forward a new method to cure more diseases with synthetic biology. Thus, through human practice, we aim to let high school students learn more about neuronal diseases and our subject and also encourage them to participate in the study of biology, especially synthetic biology and have a closer contact with iGEM. Meanwhile, we also had access to improve our project through their precious feedback in return.