Tsinghua Bauhinia Festival

On May 12th , to introduce iGEM to the high school students, we participated in the “Tsinghua Bauhinia Festival”, the university expo in NTHU, and set up a booth in the biology major part. During the communication with the high school students and their parents, we not only shared the core concept of synthetic biology but also showed our project to them. NTHU_Formosa hopes that we could expand students’ cognition of biology, and sow the seed of synthetic biology in their mind.

Singular Wings Medical

High impact projects with consequences affecting whole humanity should always be discussed with professionals from different backgrounds. For the industry, we interviewed Singular Wings Medical on July 16th. Singular Wings Medical is a very successful startup known for its award-winning product –Cardinova, a “real-time” and “non-invasive” health diagnostic system, which can track people’s cardiac conditions in daily lives to prevent heart attack, stroke, and other cardiac-related diseases. Due to the similarity between Cardinova and Biowatcher, our team chose to set up a meeting and exchange ideas with Singular Wings Medical, to understand how our project can be applied to the industry. During the meeting, Mr. Li, the general manager of the company, suggested that we should bring the plan to a more comprehensive stage. He asked us a very interesting question. “If the customer doesn’t want to use biowatcher anymore, what should we do to get the cell out of the customer’s body ? ” To solve the question, we started to search for the suicide mechanism of the reporter cell. Besides the feedback of the project, Mr. Li also gave us some suggestions for the presentation. We learned a lot from this meeting, and were more confident in biowatcher. Mr. Li said ” Keep thinking ahead! Someday the tool will be ready, and it’s time to make your dream come true.”

A conference in NCTU

We attended a conference at National Chiao Tung University held by team NCTU_Formosa on July 23rd. There are four teams participated in this conference, including NTHU_Formosa, NCTU_Formosa, Mingdao, and NTHU Taiwan. During the conference, each team presented their projects and got feedback in Q&A time. NTHU_Formosa appreciates the feedback by other teams. After sorting the questions and advice, we realized that we had to find out more information on the luminescence at 490 nm wavelength. NTHU_Formosa really got many things to confirm and to improve in this conference!

For more information, please see the Human Practices Hub. There you will find:

• an introduction to Human Practices at iGEM
• tips on how to succeed including explanations of judging criteria and advice about how to conduct and document your Human Practices work
• descriptions of exemplary work to inspire you
• links to helpful resources
• And more!

On this page, your team should document all of your Human Practices work and activities. You should write about the Human Practices topics you considered in your project, document any activities you conducted to explore these topics (such as engaging with experts and stakeholders), describe why you took a particular approach (including referencing any work you built upon), and explain if and how you integrated takeaways from your Human Practices work back into your project purpose, design and/or execution.

If your team has gone above and beyond in work related to safety, then you should document this work on your Safety wiki page and provide a description and link on this page. If your team has developed education and public engagement efforts that go beyond a focus on your particular project, and for which would like to nominate your team for the Best Education and Public Engagement Special Prize, you should document this work on your Education and Education wiki page and provide a description and link here.

Silver Medal Criterion #3

Convince the judges you have thought carefully and creatively about whether your work is responsible and good for the world. Document how you have investigated these issues and engaged with your relevant communities, why you chose this approach, and what you have learned. Please note that surveys will not fulfill this criteria unless you follow scientifically valid methods.

Gold Medal Criterion #1

Expand on your silver medal activity by demonstrating how you have integrated the investigated issues into the purpose, design and/or execution of your project. Document how your project has changed based upon your human practices work.

Best Integrated Human Practices Special Prize

To compete for the Best Integrated Human Practices prize, please describe your work on this page and also fill out the description on the judging form.

How does your project affect society and how does society influence the direction of your project? How might ethical considerations and stakeholder input guide your project purpose and design and the experiments you conduct in the lab? How does this feedback enter into the process of your work all through the iGEM competition? Document a thoughtful and creative approach to exploring these questions and how your project evolved in the process to compete for this award!

You must also delete the message box on the top of this page to be eligible for this prize.