Difference between revisions of "Team:Duesseldorf/Ontour"

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<h2>March for Science Cologne</h2>
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<h2>Mosbacher Kolloquium</h2>
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<h3>69. Mosbacher Kolloquium - "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application"</h3>
  
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<p class=details> On the 22<sup>nd</sup> April of 2018 our team participated in the March for Science Germany in Cologne.
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Every year hundreds of thousands of people worldwide demonstrate for free and not repressed scientific research as well as an evidence based policy. It is also used as a way to communicate with the public which has otherwise no or only little contact to natural science. This interaction is important though in order to create a positive picture of science in the public.
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The GBM "Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie e. V." in English "Society for biochemistry and molecular biology" (e. V. = registered society/association) welcomed us to their annual colloquium of Mosbach "Mosbacher Kolloquium". The 69th colloquium was titled "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application". The scientific organizers of the Mosbach Colloquium 2018 were Victor Sourjik (Marburg), Anke Becker (Marburg), Wilfried Weber (Freiburg) and one of our professors, Matias Zurbriggen (Dusseldorf). The Mosbacher Kolloquium is an opportunity to establish contacts, to find orientation in the research landscape or to receive detailed technical knowledge for your own projects. It’s for students of every stage of education since there is something for everyone. We were fortunate enough to have formed a carpool with students from the jGBM ("Junior GBM") who gave us valuable tips about the colloquium.
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Our team met at the Domplatte in Cologne at 11am and together with the iGEM teams from Bielefeld, Bonn and Aachen as well as one thousand other participants we marched 2 kilometres (1.24 miles) downtown to the Rudolfsplatz. On the way there several interested people stopped and listened to our slogans for free science.
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At the Rudolfsplatz a lot of speeches and talks from a variety of journalists, physicists and biologists, like Ranga Yogeshwar and Mark Benecke were given. We discussed fakes news and biased data of governmental proclamations as well as the repression of scientific work. An additional important aspect was the responsibility of the scientific community in representing themselves to the general public. Therefore the work of science journalists is very important for public relations. Some of the speeches picked out the working conditions of German scientists regarding permanent employment and resulting problems in life balance and family planning.
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The speeches on the event were very informative and showed how important it is to be well received by the public. This event was the reason why our team decided to put more effort into public relations.
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<img class="floatleft half-width nomargin" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/3/34/T--Duesseldorf--Mosbach1.JPG">
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<img src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/c/c4/T--Duesseldorf--MarchforScience.JPG">
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Of course, the main focus were the science talks: One interesting talk was by Hannah Wagner from the University of Freiburg, who synthesized a positive feedback loop with molecular switches. Mustafa Khammash from the ETH Zurich spoke about the application of optogenetics in synthetic biology and provided the Mosbach Colloquium with several posters about his research, which were represented at the poster sessions. The general take-home-message was that synthetic biology is the chance to understand what life is. As Nobelist (1965) Richard Feynman said:<br>
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<strong><i>“What we cannot create, we do not understand.”</strong></i>
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In addition to the science talks, a get-together "Get to know iGEM" was organized for current and former iGEM participants and interested parties. iGEM Hamburg, iGEM Marburg and former participants of iGEM Darmstadt among others attended.
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We discussed how to establish the iGEM competition in an university and were given advice on conflict counseling in the team and on sponsorship. We also motivated those interested to apply for their university iGEM-team next year or even to form an iGEM team themselves.
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<img class="half-width" src="https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/6/61/T--Duesseldorf--Mosbach2.png">
 
  
 
  
  

Revision as of 07:46, 29 August 2018

Trinity On Tour


Monschau

Our first common journey with the team led us to the small resort town Monschau in the Eifel region of western Germany. For the weekend from the 2nd to 4th of March we stayed in the castle of Monschau for team building purposes. We traveled with bus and train via Aachen to Monschau. During the ride it started snowing which is why it we were granted a wonderful view at our arrival. We had to walk through the snow-covered city up to the castle late at night and met a man dressed as a medieval guard soldier, who explained us the quickest way to the castle. The next morning we held our first team building exercise in the castle, guided by one of our advisors. The aim was to estimate our own strengths and thing about the area of responsibility in which we can use our abilities the most. It started with a little game about ourselves. We made a poster with different important characters in a team like “planner and manager” or “creator” and everyone listed themselves under one or more categories. Then we asked for every person how the team members would categorize this person and if they agree with the self-assessment. After lunch we explored snowy Monschau in daylight, took pictures together and looked for souvenirs. Back at the hostel we met again to hold our next seminar connecting to our previous one. Now we started to plan the structure of our team and decided that it is beneficial to have three main coordinators for our “trinity” with three different tasks: a team leader, a social-media-representative and a laboratory-manager. After the hard part our advisor had planned some games for us with the main focus on communication. The first is called “Gordian Knot” where we all stood in a circle and had to grab two random hands. Then the challenge was to unknot everyone without letting go of the hands in order to rebuild the circle. The next game was a bit more difficult. We divided the team into 4 groups and decided on a leader in each group. Each member of each group got different cards from a normal card-set and we had to sort them in a specific way. During the game we were not allowed to speak and only the leader knew the task we had to do. We were only allowed to communicate with little notes, which was not easy for us. The team who used the fewest number of notes won the game. In the evening hunger overcame us and led us to an Italian restaurant overlooking the half-frozen river “Rur“. Our last evening in Monschau was completed with a cozy get-together with card games. The next day, after breakfast, we set out home after a successful, wonderful weekend in the Eifel.

Mosbacher Kolloquium

69. Mosbacher Kolloquium - "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application"

The GBM "Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie e. V." in English "Society for biochemistry and molecular biology" (e. V. = registered society/association) welcomed us to their annual colloquium of Mosbach "Mosbacher Kolloquium". The 69th colloquium was titled "Synthetic Biology - from Understanding to Application". The scientific organizers of the Mosbach Colloquium 2018 were Victor Sourjik (Marburg), Anke Becker (Marburg), Wilfried Weber (Freiburg) and one of our professors, Matias Zurbriggen (Dusseldorf). The Mosbacher Kolloquium is an opportunity to establish contacts, to find orientation in the research landscape or to receive detailed technical knowledge for your own projects. It’s for students of every stage of education since there is something for everyone. We were fortunate enough to have formed a carpool with students from the jGBM ("Junior GBM") who gave us valuable tips about the colloquium.

Of course, the main focus were the science talks: One interesting talk was by Hannah Wagner from the University of Freiburg, who synthesized a positive feedback loop with molecular switches. Mustafa Khammash from the ETH Zurich spoke about the application of optogenetics in synthetic biology and provided the Mosbach Colloquium with several posters about his research, which were represented at the poster sessions. The general take-home-message was that synthetic biology is the chance to understand what life is. As Nobelist (1965) Richard Feynman said:
“What we cannot create, we do not understand.”

In addition to the science talks, a get-together "Get to know iGEM" was organized for current and former iGEM participants and interested parties. iGEM Hamburg, iGEM Marburg and former participants of iGEM Darmstadt among others attended. We discussed how to establish the iGEM competition in an university and were given advice on conflict counseling in the team and on sponsorship. We also motivated those interested to apply for their university iGEM-team next year or even to form an iGEM team themselves.