Team:IISER-Bhopal-India/Public Engagement
iGEM Day
iGEM 2018 being our debut competition, we wanted to start with a bang and intended to do something significant like our counterparts IISc Bangalore did when they hosted the ‘All India iGEM Meetup’. We decided to organize an event in our college itself for our community members, to give them a glimpse of iGEM, as a celebration of creativity, as a conglomeration of minds. On August 25th we organized ‘iGEM Day’. We held engaging competitions and talks to inspire curious young minds who found the idea behind iGEM fascinating and wanted to know and understand more about it. We hosted four major events, namely, ‘Battle of Wits’, ‘Syn-Bio Symposium’, ‘Meet the iGEMers’, ‘Project Methnote’, and ‘Mini iGEM’. .
Battle of Wits
Students turned up to participate in ‘Battle Of Wits’, a debate competition, to rack their brains around pressing issues like ethics of animal experimental models, eugenics and GMOs. The teams were judged by our faculties Dr. Shyam Sundar Reddy and Dr. Neetu Kalra on the basis of their active participation the originality of their ideas, which is something in the same spirit as that of iGEM itself. We were amazed to see the diversity of thought and opinion stemming out of sharp minds.
Syn-Bio Symposium
This event was about showcasing the ideas of 9 Indian iGEM 2018 teams that sent us their project description. We presented our Team poster here to let everyone know about our work status. The poster was reviewed and scrutinized by our faculties.
Meet the iGEMers
We had the privilege of having one of our faculty, Dr. Nagarjun Vijay, opening the session with a talk. Being an ex-iGEMer (Uppsala University, Sweden, 2010), he shared his own experience of participating in this competition. He talked about his own project idea, the logistics, and practicalities of taking part in such a prestigious competition and most importantly how rewarding a learning experience it is for aspiring researchers. His pertinent replies to queries were immensely useful to everyone. The session then drifted towards discussing the potential of synthetic biology for the world.
We concluded this event after a short presentation showing the start of our team, our journey until then, and sharing funny stories about our team members.
Project Methnote
We were delighted by the presence of our Ex-Director Prof. Vinod Kumar Singh and our Professors, Ph.D. students and community members across all departments. We received constructive feedback from the attendees regarding lab and human practices. They also helped us troubleshoot certain persistent issues. Discussions were held wherein the community members suggested strategies for the possible commercialization of our project as a product.
Mini iGEM
The session of mini-iGEM was to give a flavor of iGEM to the young aspirants, we have given real-life biology problems to the students and brainstorms them first hand.
Bio-Tech Sessions
Several events were organized at our institute for aspirants to gain in-depth knowledge of various scientific fields at IISER Bhopal. Extensive lectures on various Branches of Biology were presented to students which included topics such as principles of Synbio, Forensic Biology, Molecular Biology. Discussion about Bioethics and Biosafety were also held. During the workshops, the team assisted students in learning various molecular biology techniques. Tasks that were conducted during the workshop included extraction of DNA from saliva and Bacterial Samples collected from various environments, pipetting and microbiology techniques such as Pouring, Streaking etc.
Fundraising
We consider iGEM as a splendid opportunity to exhibit our project which aims to help curb global climate change. We believe that a successful project requires many things to come together, and funding is one of the key factors. We started our fundraising campaign in July. We promoted our fundraising campaign through our social media sites and personal interactions. Through our efforts, we were fortunate to have received around 18% of our total goal through crowdfunding.
IISER Bhopal Biology Club
The first meeting regarding iGEM was conducted during our institute’s Biology Club meeting held in November 2017. Intense discussion about various project ideas was followed by the formation of our team. After the iGEM registration, we continued to promote iGEM through the club on a weekly basis to inspire our juniors and batchmates to pursue similar projects for future iGEM competitions.
During such interactions, we noticed that even at the university level, synthetic biology curriculum was discrete and thus more awareness and knowledge-sharing was required. So we initiated plenary talks at the club meetings to give overviews on several topics to the community, such as gene-machines, CRISPR, Recombinant Technology, Omics and Biomathematics.
Apart from the talks, we also conducted a couple of fun activities and competitions at the club in order to promote SynBio in the community.
Biotechnology Quizzes
During the course of our project, we have conducted Biology Quizzes in the community to promote Synthetic Biology. Quizzes on different topics were held and we got a huge response for them from our community.
Then we took a step further and created synbio and iGEM quiz at the “QUIZ UP” platform (an android application for hosting quizzes). The quiz was open to all and we received an overwhelming response for the same.
During the course of our project, we have conducted Biology Quizzes in the community to promote Synthetic Biology. Quizzes on different topics were held and we got a huge response for them from our community. Then we took a step further and created synbio & iGEM quiz at the “ QUIZ UP” platform ( an android application for hosting Quizzes). The quiz was open to all and we received an overwhelming response for the same.
Singularity 2018
Singularity 2018 is the annual science fest at IISER Bhopal held on 5-7 October. We presented our poster at the singularity event which was reviewed by all student community and various faculty members from across different disciplines. We got some good reviews and valuable suggestions for the project.