In the early months of our iGEM project, Tenna from our team was recognized by her elementary school from seven years ago who felt delight that one of his students had been touched and chosen a career in science. They agreed that back then, the chances for being inspired and learn about different branches, such as biology, had been too low.

It was between the two of them that our ‘Elementary Impress Project’ grew.

As a part of our community engagement, we embarked on this journey of presenting the many possibilities in biotechnology and its intriguing possibilities to make the world a better place to ninth graders in elementary school.

Lina, Tenna and Jacob began the venture with three classes, a total of 60 students, who were all very eager to learn the advancements and capabilities that biotechnology holds in transforming our every day. After a short introduction to iGEM and our project, we spent some time embarking in subjects such as medical microbiology, bioinformatics, astrobiology and, of course, synthetic biology. We wanted to illuminate the variation of branches one could take and remove the stigma that biotechnology is “only bacteria and yeast”.

We then proceeded to teach the students about existing projects, here among some old iGEM projects from DTU, and what their possibilities with education and careers in Denmark are. After the enlightenment of what you could do with synthetic biology a discussion began between the students with what a possible project could be. No ideas were too out there and we tried to develop on their ideas and illuminate the feasible aspects of them.

On this page, your team should document your Education and Public Engagement work and activities. Describe your team’s efforts to include more people in shaping synthetic biology (such as creating or building upon innovative educational tools and/or public engagement activities to establish two-way dialogue with new communities, and/or engaging new groups in discussions about synthetic biology and public values). Describe your approach, why you chose it, and what was learned by everyone involved (including yourselves!).

This work may relate to or overlap with the work you document on your Human Practices page. Whereas Integrated Human Practices relates to the process of refining your project purpose and design, this page may highlight significant efforts that go beyond your particular project focus and/or address a significant broader concern in iGEM.

Of course, we didn’t want it to be too heavy for the fleeting minds of ninth graders and, we not only made sure to keep it interactive with questions, but we also held a fun Kahoot quiz where their listening skills was put to a test and their Fortnite knowledge was questioned.

The students were thrilled and the teachers all agreed that they would like this to be an annual event with the future DTU iGEM teams.

After haven gotten success with the first school, interest grew among other schools. After a short period, we got into contact with Lina’s old school, a local private school in

At the end of the iGEM-period, we had visited one schools and had plans of visiting one schools.