Team:AFCM-Egypt/Human Practices
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STEM
The Egyptian STEM High School is an institution of learning launched to provide youth with a world-class education in the critical areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
They seek to ensure Egypt will have a fully engaged citizenry of inquisitive and determined youth who are well qualified to respond to the Grand Challenges facing our nation; to increase opportunities for Egyptians to stay and work in Egypt.
So we aimed to help link them with the latest innovations and research issues specifically those who deal with synthetic biology and bioinformatics. Also, how to work as a team with their colleagues and teachers. We advised them to join iGEM next year and we're pretty sure they're going to accomplish something.
PIS
Port-said international schools is a sample representing the schools of Egypt. This time our target was different, we went there and spoke to them about medical science besides synthetic biology and bioinformatics.
We had sessions done for them that show them how to deal with patients and communicate with them. Also, we arranged a small magic show for the little kids at the school under the title of "playing with science". Even though the sessions may seem simple. Yet, they had a great effect on the souls and minds of these young lads.
At the end of the day, we gave them a presentation about our new idea and what we strive to achieve at this year's competition. They were excited to search for the new things we taught them that day and even more excited to hear about what we're going to do in iGEM 2018.
MIU
Involving college students of the future especially pharmacists in what we do, is one of the things we hope to accomplish. So we planned a visit to one of our honored colleges in Egypt.
In this visit we spoke to them about what's iGEM, who we are and what we do. Unfortunately, not everyone knows iGEM and not everyone is interested in synthetic biology but this is not because they don't like synthetic biology. But, it's because they don't know what synthetic biology is. So we spoke to them about it, bioinformatics and of course the iGEM competition. It was a fruitful day and we think we can see the results of what we did this day in their enthusiasm to learn about synthetic biology.
Lab Training
Through our journey in the human practices part, we held many events at different schools. At those events we mainly spoke about iGEM and synthetic biology. All of them were fascinated by our ideas and what we do;
Several school students reached out to us feeling eager to join our team and experience the scientific work firsthand. We were delighted by their enthusiasm and happily welcomed them into our team.
they wanted to join us, help us and be a part of what we do… but they were just too many. Sad enough we had to only pick a few of them to be involved in our journey.
They were really happy but we were even happier to teach them and guide them through the lab work, human practices and mostly the team's fun day. We learned a lot from them as well. They helped us in organizing other human practices events at their communities. This experience reminded us why we chose research and why we entered iGEM's competition at the first place.
Aly Mohamed
"Hello, my name's Ali I'm 16 years old. The day AFCM visited my school was one of my luckiest days ever. I got to join them as an observer of what they do in the great iGEM competition. I loved everything; the lab works, how we work together in a team, the human practices and joking around with the team. "
Ayman Ahmed
"Hey there, this is Ayman Ahmed. I'm 17 years old and I consider myself so blessed. Having such a great experience in joining the AFCM iGEM team enlightened me with new aspects of science that I didn't know existed. I loved every part of it specially the lab work. I'm really honored to be one of the AFCM iGEM-Egypt team."
57357
57357 is the biggest children cancer hospital in the Middle East and one of the outmost supporters for our team.
Thanks to its CEO Dr. Sherif abo-el Naga we have got over so many obstacles during our research track. Thus we thought that arranging an event at the international women's day at their hospital is a great idea and was one of the biggest events we held. It gave us the opportunity to meet women representatives of all Egypt.
We discussed with them what cancer is, gave them a brief about what can cause it and the healthy lifestyle that could save us from it. Because we all know that women are half of the society and they raise up the other half, we felt that it is a must to enlighten them with such information.
Talee Alkamal
Talaee Al-Kamal is a distinguished school representing a sample of Egyptian private schools. We went there with a clear purpose; spreading cancer awareness and introducing iGEM.
Our day at the school consisted of three interactive talks the first one being an introduction to iGEM. We specifically aimed to encourage the school’s teens towards the STEM sciences. We made sure to explain to them what the purpose of iGEM is and how schools can participate in iGEM. The second talk aimed to introduce the students to some of our daily habits that could cause cancer. We mainly focused on dietary habits and how lifestyle changes could minimize an individual’s predisposition to cancer.
Our third talk was aimed at introducing our idea for iGEM 2018 in a simplified manner and we even encouraged the students to critique it. We ended the day with an open discussion with all the young eager minds we got to meet. It was a lovely experience where we felt how an audience could be engaged when addressed with enthusiasm and simplified scientific notions.
