Team:Tec-Monterrey/Public Engagement

In Mexico:

Only 21.5% of the population has a good understanding regarding scientific studies.
70% believe antibiotics are used in the treatment of viral and bacterial diseases.
45.7% believe that scientist, due to their knowledge, are dangerous.

Source: CONACYT-INEGI, Encuesta sobre la Percepción Pública de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ENPECYT), 2017
The population of Mexico often perceives science as something beyond their understanding and reach, this lead to a poor basic education and promotion of STEM fields and also fewer investment from companies and the government in science research and education.

This overview gave us the motivation to work really hard towards creating something that could contribute to change the perspective of people in our country about science and hopefully, the initiative from governmental departments and industry companies towards supporting science research and STEM education fields.

We firmly believe the diffusion and understanding of science is a huge area of opportunity in our country, this being said, we took huge responsibility on creating spaces where we could establish a public dialogue about synthetic biology, create the ability of discussing the science behind synthetic biology and mainly, create new scientific curiosity in people of all ages and races.

As a team, we didn't want what happened in the lab to stay in the lab.

We invested months of hard work into the Public and Education Engagement component of our project, accomplishing an outstanding reach of over 200,000 people through our social media impact and the different activities we conducted, such as: a National Congress of Science, an After iGEM networking event, a National Education Tour, Workshops, a video collaboration with Curiosamente (an educational youtube channel with over 1 million subscribers), articles in magazines of national reach, three national presentations in science conferences, one international presentation at GCURS at RICE University, attendance to two iGEM meetups and a college credit class: Science Seminar.

National Congress of Sciences 2018

Dates: September 14 & 15, 2018

General description

The iGEM National Congress of Science was the biggest event organized by iGEM Tec Monterrey, it reached the participation of over 200 undergraduate and graduate students who came from 18 different states of México to our university: Tec de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey.

We chose to organize and host this event because we firmly believed it was the best way we could give students like us the opportunity to learn from proficient people in specific areas such as: chemistry, nanotechnology, biotechnology, nanomedicine, synthetic biology, and sustainability.

We aimed to inspire the attendees, hoping to interest them in getting more involved with science and technology with the hopes that they will, in turn, inspire others.

The iGEM National Congress of Science was also a great learning opportunity for us. We had the chance to attend several of the conferences and workshops; but most importantly we met new people from all over Mexico with whom we were able to establish a two-way dialogue and share ideas.

Objectives:

To promote science among Mexican undergraduate and graduate students to encourage, both their personal development and the development of our country through science.
To have the opportunity to interact with the scientific community of all around our country, for understanding different points of view and perspectives about the present and future of Mexican research.
To gain a wider network of people with research related affiliations and having the opportunity of connecting points for the creation and development of further projects.

General Content:

12 conferences from experts of the fields: Biology, Chemistry, Nanomedicine and Sustainable Development.
1 Discussion Panel about the iGEM competition.
6 workshops where students experienced with chemical and biological concepts in the laboratory.
After iGEM (Networking Event).

After iGEM

Date: September 15th, 2018

After iGEM was an extension to our National Congress of Science. The event consisted of a networking session with the participation of iGEM Ambassador Camilo Chávez, iGEM Instructor Heber Torres, ex-iGEMers, iGEM judge Carolina Elizondo, Scintia co-founder Minerva Castellanos, ETH Zurich graduate Mercedes Vázquez, Student Association of Genomic Biotechnology (AsEBioGen) and an attendance of approximately 50 undergraduate and graduate students from STEM majors.

We aimed to spark interest in biotechnology and synthetic biology projects by conducting a panel of discussion and a networking event with iGEM alumni.

AfteriGEM opened up as a space where attendees had the opportunity to interact with each other and create bonds between projects and teams. During the event, the iGEM community at Tecnológico de Monterrey helped and assessed students on creating their own iGEM teams at their institutions.

National Educational Tour 2018

Dates: April-September 2018

The children´s right of quality education is a foundational element for the development of a country; sadly, in our country it is often seen as a privilege rather than a right. We wanted to create something that would contribute to change that, that´s how the iGEM National Educational Tour 2018 was born.

Most of us, coming from small towns and knowing first-hand what it is like to not have a lot of opportunities for personal and academic development, felt the social commitment and responsibility to share the knowledge we were acquiring with as many students as possible all around our country.

We took the challenge and visited five states of Mexico where we imparted conferences and workshops for high school and undergraduate students. We accomplished the goal of extending our passion for science, research and its applications and to ignite interest among students that if it was not for us could have not learned or understood about synthetic biology.

Veracruz

Michoacán

Jalisco

Chihuahua

Nuevo León I

Nuevo León II

Institution:
COBAEV
State:
Veracruz
Activity:
Synthetic Biology Workshop

Institution:
CEJA
State:
Michoacán
Activity:
Conferences

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Jalisco
Activity:
Conference

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Chihuahua
Activity:
Networking sessions

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Nuevo León
Activity:
Open Lab to general public

Institution:
Instituto Vicente Suárez
State:
Nuevo León
Activity:
Conference

Workshops

Mathematical modeling of genetic circuits

With the help of CONACYT, we brought Jesús Siller, Oxford Ph.D. candidate, to our Campus, where he imparted a two session workshop about mathematical modeling of genetic circuits to a selected group of undergraduate students from Tec de Monterrey, UANL and UDEM.

Petri dish art

As a team, we imparted a petri dish art workshop where undergraduate and high school students created their own artwork after having a theoretical session of synthetic biology.

Science Seminar

Dates: September 14 & 15, 2018

As we got more involved into presentations, conferences and symposiums we saw the value and impact that this type of activities had on the way students where learning and getting interested in various thematics, that where not exactly their own. This feedback stimulated in us the desire to link STEM fields into one place to discuss the different approaches of a single thematic and show them how we all complement each other as one to create great things.

In collaboration with SACI (Science and Engineering Alumni Society) from Tec de Monterrey we created Seminar of Science, a tuition free course for regional universities of Nuevo León as: Tecnológico de Monterrey, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (Schools of Chemistry, Biology and Physics) and Universidad de Monterrey, where experts in different science fields from around the world shared with the student community their experience and trayectory.

We had an attendance of over 130 people per session , all from different majors such as: B. S. Biotechnology Engineering, B. S. Physics, B. S. Chemistry and Nanotechnology Engineering, B.S. Food Industry Engineering, B.S. Sustainable Development Engineering, B.S. Mechanical Engineering with minor in Industrial Engineering, B.S. Mechanical Engineering with minor in Environmental Engineering, B.S. Chemical Engineering with minor in Industrial Engineering, B.S. Innovation and Development Engineering.

Through these 10 sessions, we were able to discuss science while creating a network between researchers and students pursuing research opportunities.

Session with researcher and professor Marion Brunck about cell Therapies

Diffusion

Sharing our work with people in and outside of our community has always been very important to our team. We hoped to get people interested in our project and motivate them with it to apply their knowledge and talents to solve pressing issues.

To do this, we promoted our team’s work in synthetic biology through diverse media with a great reach, receiving a favorable response from people.

Magazine Articles

We were interviewed by three magazines of national reach about our project E-Coding and our lab dynamic.

Milenio

Tec Review

CONECTA

4TOPODER

Milenio Noticias
For the full article, you can visit: http://www.milenio.com/ciencia-y-salud/sociedad/jovenes-tec-apuestan-crear-conciencia-memoria-biologica#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=Facebook&_gsc=cYTpvAQ

Tec Review
For the full article, you can visit: https://tecreview.tec.mx/estudiantes-buscan-mitigar-contaminacion-en-agua-memoria-biologica/?hootPostID=7f10a0a707b8ca3d254ec1dc068b809c

CONECTA
For the full article, you can visit: https://tec.mx/es/noticias/nacional/investigacion/buscan-mitigar-contaminacion-en-agua-con-memoria-biologica

4TOPODER
For the full article, you can visit: http://www.cuartopoder.mx/contaminacion-en-chiapas-exhibida-a-nivel-mundial-262188.html

Congress Presentations

We did four poster presentations about E-Coding at the following Congress meetings:

Genobiotec

Expociencias

ConexiónTec

GCURS

Genobiotec is one of the most important national congress about biotechnology and genomics, here we established a public dialogue about E-Coding with researchers in synthetic biology, professionals and investors.

Expociencias is a program from the National network of youth activities in Science and Technology whose objective is to promote the participation of young people on scientific and research projects.

ConexiónTec is an institutional event from Tec de Monterrey where students expose projects that address engineering problems relevant to industry and society, where we won first place in the category of Research and Development of improvement.

The Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCURS) is hosted by Rice University in Houston, Texas. GCURS provides current undergraduates the opportunity to present their original research discoveries to scholars from around the world. iGEM Tec-Monterrey had the opportunity of presenting project with iGEM Rice and having a first real interaction with international research community.

Nowadays, social media has become a fundamental tool to reach new people and establish communication with them. We live in a globalized society, and it is thanks to these platforms that we get to increment the amount of interactions we have not only with the people around us but with people all around the globe. They give us the ability to inspire We used several social media platforms to share information about our project, our team, events and more.

Youtube
Collaboration with Curiosamente (click on the image to see the video):

We were lucky to have the opportunity of collaborating with Curiosamente, a youtube channel with over 1 Million subscribers, oriented to creating animated videos explaining cultural and scientific phenomenon. The video is about biotechnology and genomic modifications, and a introduction of our project, it reached over 150, 000 views since it was posted.

Facebook

Throughout this year, we had an increase in the interactions of our Facebook page. It was through this social media where we promoted our events, advances, publications, among other miscellaneous content. This gave us the opportunity to reach about 87,000+ people, 4,000 likes that keep growing as of now and around 700 replies all together from all of our different events.

As we mentioned before, the publicity of our events was given out through this platform, since it became the perfect place for people to get registered. Facebook became a fundamental tool for us since it was through this platform that people had contact with us and got involved with us and our project, E-coding.

Ambassadors of Science. That's what we aspire to be.

Team:Tec-Monterrey/Public Engagement

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