Team:Thessaloniki/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
Public Engagement
As a project competing in the foundational advance track, we faced difficulties in our efforts to properly communicate our work. We contacted Asterios Arampatzis, Team Leader of iGEM Greece 2017, in order to gain some insight about the problems they may have met and dealt with, regarding the communication of Synthetic Biology and their project to the world. He shared with us his experience, stating that synthetic biology is nearly absent from our country, as the public has not been properly informed and there are not many researchers in the field.
This year, we wanted to make sure that the iGEM Foundation, and synthetic biology in general, would come in attention of a larger audience. We aimed to inform people of various ages, scientific backgrounds and nationalities about this new and exciting, yet relatively unknown in our country, scientific field, raise awareness about genetic engineering, discuss about the important ethical issues that come up with synthetic biology’s constant growth and receive valuable feedback for our project’s application and importance to the world.
We organized numerous activities, differentiating our approach depending on the audience. In order to familiarize them with synthetic biology we presented several iGEM projects from previous years that we believed, demonstrate that synthetic biology can prove beneficial in real world problems. We, also, wanted to communicate our project, so wee could gain some feedback and understand the public’s reception of it.
Finally, taking into consideration public’s feedback, we wanted to address the issue of science communication to the public. So, the highlight of our activities this year was the organization of the “SynBalkans Tour”, an educational effort in order to broaden the knowledge about synthetic biology in the Balkan Region, considering the different cultural and scientific background of the audience.
Motivation
The highlight of our public engagement efforts was the organization of the “SynBalkans Tour”, a series of events dedicated to science communication across the Balkan region. Through this tour, our goal was to form a lasting scientific cooperation between institutes in the Balkan Peninsula and provide students with the opportunity to get acquainted with a novel scientific branch, synthetic biology.
Before the event
Before going on tour, we wanted to make sure that we would be able to engage people with different cultural and scientific backgrounds. We came in contact with professors and students from the Department of Balkan Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia. We learned about the cultural differences between Balkan countries, so that we could differentiate our approach in each country, always taking into consideration their respective cultural and religious beliefs.
Apart from cultural differences we, also, had to take into account the different scientific background of the people going to attend our event, as synthetic biology is characterized by interdisciplinarity. For this reason, we chose to differentiate the content of our presentation, discussing about synthetic biology applications that are closer to the participants’ academic interests.
Along with our project, we used exemples from last year’s iGEM Competition in order to give a good example of synthetic biological circuit utilization. Acknowledgments to iGEM teams Exeter 2017, TUDelft 2017, ETH Zurich 2017, IONIS PARIS 2017, for their inspiring work.
Our Events:
In 5 days, we visited 4 universities in 3 different countries: University of Belgrade and University of Novi Sad (Serbia), University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), University of Split (Croatia).
Students with an academic background in agriculture were especially eager to know how genetically engineered organisms can be used for environmental purposes without posing serious threats to ecosystems. We discussed about the implementation of kill switches in genetically modified organisms and the safety checkpoints that such engineered systems should feature.
University of Belgrade - Faculty of Biology
University of Novi Sad - School of Agriculture
University of Sarajevo - Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences
University of Split - School of Biology and Chemistry
We prepared a short presentation that introduced the audience in the principles and basic tools of Synthetic Biology. First, we introduced our team to the audience. Next, we explained the principles of synthetic biology and mentioned some of its applications (i.e. quorum sensing, metabolic engineering, biosensors). Then, we presented our project, Galene, as well as projects of previous years’ iGEM Teams to demonstrate the use of synthetic biology. The projects used in each presentation were selected depending on the participants field of study. Since bioethics and security have to be seriously considered during a project’s design and execution, we highlighted the efforts of the aforementioned projects to address these issues.
After we wrapped up our presentation, we discussed with students and professors about synthetic biology and the iGEM Competition. Students showed interest in learning more about the engineering principles of synthetic biology. We were happy to elaborate on the use of logic gates and explain them terms such as orthogonality and robustness.
Survey
Finally, students were asked to complete a short questionnaire. Here are the results:
Reception
All professors welcomed the idea of organizing a second visit in the balkan region, where we would have the opportunity to interact with students through synthetic biology workshops.
Dr Jasna Puizina, University of Split, told us that she was impressed that undergraduate students were involved in such a contemporary branch of science. She wanted to learn more about the iGEM Competition and shared with us her interest about the formation of an interbalkan iGEM team. She concluded that she will initiate discussions so that synthetic biology courses will be added in the faculty’s curriculum.
We also had a discussion with Dr Alen Mujcinovic, University of Sarajevo, as he was interested in the entrepreneurship side of iGEM and synthetic biology’s applications in agriculture. He thought that involvement in the iGEM Competition would be a great opportunity for students of the faculty.
Conclusion
As this was our first time presenting in front of such a large audience in English, we believe that this experience will prove very useful to us. We managed to communicate our work to people of other nationalities and interacted with numerous researchers in the Balkan region receiving their comments about our work.
Students participating in our event got to know a lot about Synthetic Biology and, through examples & discussion, understood how synthetic biological circuits can be used in real-world applications.
We have already made plans to continue our activities in the Balkan region, with the organization of interactive workshops and presentations.
Athens - 4/6/2018
We believe that workshops is a great way to introduce someone to a specific scientific branch. An interactive approach gives the individual the opportunity to to be more involved in the learning process, promoting not only knowledge, but creativity as well. So,in collaboration with iGEM Athens and Dr. Konstantinos Vavitsas, from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, we organised the first Synthetic Biology workshop (SymBio) in Greece. The SynBio Workshop took place at the event hall of National Technical University of Athens. The participants had very different scientific backgrounds, from medicine to chemical engineering.
After speeches from Dr K. Vavitsas (An Introduction to Synthetic Biology) and Professor Emeritus Fr. Kolisis (Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology), iGEM Thessaloniki, iGEM Athens and iGEM Greece (2017) presented their projects to the audience. When the presentations were over, Yvoni (iGEM Thessaloniki) and Giannis (iGEM Athens) spoke about the applications of engineering principles in synthetic biology and explained the use of some basic synthetic biology tools (e.g. toggle switch, oscillator, riboswitch) in order for the participants to be able to use them in their brainstorming sessions. Leda (iGEM Athens) talked about the safety precautions and evaluation process that a project should pass in order to be considered safe.
The students were then divided into subgroups and participated in a brainstorming session in order to solve real world problems using synthetic biology circuits, with help from members of iGEM teams. Finally, they managed to come up with innovative ways to tackle problems such as wound healing, forest restoration and infant food allergies. In the end, the participants presented the ideas they had come up with and before leaving they were asked to fill in a short questionnaire regarding their experience in the workshop.
Thessaloniki - 26/5/2018
Students of the faculty of Pharmacy, AUTH, invited us to the Pharmacology Club where we gave a speech about Synthetic Biology and its contribution in Health Sciences and Pharmacology. We spoke to them about the production of artemisinin, an antimalarial pharmaceutical compound, from yeast and explained the advantages of this method of production compared to the traditional isolation of artemisinin from the pharmaceutical plant. We, also, gave them examples of iGEM Projects in the diagnostics and therapeutics tracks. Specifically, we presented the pANDORA (iGEM Greece 2017, therapeutics), CATE (ETH Zurich 2017, therapeutics) and Gotta Detect’ Em All (INSA-Lyon 2016, diagnostics) projects and after that we had an in depth conversation with the students about the synthetic biology circuits used in the aforementioned projects, as well as the safety concerns they took into consideration. We enjoyed interacting with students that are eager to learn about science beyond the classroom, gaining insight in the measures that have to be taken for the appropriate management of the safety risks of drugs during their development phase and post-marketing phase.
Alexandroupoli
We visited Zarifeios Akadimia, a primary school in Alexandroupoli, in order to spark the students’ interest for science and introduce them to the concept of synthetic biology. As we wanted to actively include them in our activity, we used candy as an example of DNA’s structure and characteristics to construct an edible DNA helix. Different color candy standed for different nitrogenous bases, representing how complementarity works in the DNA. Each student built a different “DNA sequence” by selecting different colored candy. This is how we managed to explain that, in synthetic biology, scientists can design their own DNA sequences in order to achieve the desired result. In addition, the students, with our assistance, isolated DNA from bananas. This way, we displayed that the DNA is not an abstract concept, but it is a molecule of vital importance that exists in every living organism.
Alexandroupoli - 3/3/2018
Student-Run Biology Workshop (SRBW) is a congress organized by students of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics from the Democritus University of Thrace, taking place in Alexandroupoli. The goal of the congress is to bring students from all over the country together, so that they can meet with colleagues from different universities, get hands-on experience and create presentations and talks about interesting scientific topics. So, we thought that the 3rd SRBW was an excellent chance for us to introduce Synthetic Biology to a crowd full of future scientists. We gave a speech about Synthetic Biology, its origins, tools and its vast number of applications.
Larisa - 3/3/2018
At the high school level, we came in contact with two major educational institutions, “Eniaio Ekpaideutiko Kentron” and “Frontistirio Agrafiotis”. The owners and professors showed interest in our project and we wanted to make sure that the students could learn about an interdisciplinary branch of science, synthetic biology, as well as understand our project. Even though we came in with high hopes, we could not have imagined the amount of questions and excitement that the students shown. During our presentation, we explained them the basics of synthetic biology by showing them exemplary projects as well as the project we were designing.
In our country, the final years of high school tend to be very stressful and taxing for students [1]. The PanHellenic exams are very competitive and, on top of that, students confront the difficult task of deciding their school of preference/ preferred field of study/ career orientation in such a young age. We, as an iGEM Team, are characterised by interdisciplinarity and many of us could not ever imagine that we would be involved in the design of a biological system in an undergraduate level. So, we made an effort to highlight that interdisciplinarity [2] is one of the main characteristics of modern academia and industry, as well as that there are a lot of opportunities to evolve and get into novel scientific branches, such as Synthetic Biology. Therefore, we believe that our interaction with the students gave them the chance to learn about contemporary science beyond school books. In addition, we gave them examples proving that their chosen field of study is not confining and, through interdisciplinarity, they can pursue their goals and get involved in exciting projects and activities. We were thankful to have the chance to promote science in such an interactive way, and have made plans to further extend our outreach after the competition.
[1] Zaralidis, Vasileios. (2015). Stress and Burnout in Senior High School Students in a Greek High School.. 10.13140/RG.2.1.3345.2000.
[2] Bridle, H., Vrieling, A., Cardillo, M., Araya, Y., & Hinojosa, L. (2013). Preparing for an interdisciplinary future: A perspective from early-career researchers. Futures, 53, 22–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.FUTURES.2013.09.003