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Human Practices: Education and Public Engagement Special Prize

Our education and public engagement aimed to design a specific iGEM induction with a series of synthetic biology teaching games and courses based on our own experience, to promote iGEM and synthetic biology. We aimed to focus on places, where iGEM and synthetic biology is less commonly known.

In order to tackle this issue, we have worked with an Edinburgh local startup, called Smart Home Education Ltd., which mostly focus on develop and expand their online educational platform. This opportunity potentially allow us to maximum our outreach. Our team successfully contacted a high school with advanced teaching resources in Macau, where there is no previous iGEM team and no synthetic biology or microbiology degree or master available in their universities. One of our team members even visited this high school to share our iGEM experience with their potential iGEMers and they are now planning to join iGEM in 2019 to be the first team from Macau. Moreover, we have been continuously providing suggestions and answer their questions, as we all know iGEM competition can be a challenge.

In order to further promote iGEM and synthetic biology in Macau, we have also worked with a new Macau start up, called Yorkshire Online Academy, and together we were joining the 2018 Macau International Trade & Investment Fair to talk to sectors related to education in Macau and other international traders, providing our materials and experience to support them.

Back to the Edinburgh local region, our team presented our iGEM project to the 2017-2018, and 2018-19 University of Edinburgh MSc student cohort and discussed our experience of integrating iGEM into our MSc degree programme.