Outreach and Education

How did we approach Outreach and Education?

These outreach events came because of the communication protocols using the science communication framework. We recognized that discussion of socio-ethics as well as a look at the potential of patterning applications in a way that is not abstract to the audience were the most effective methods in maintaining audience interest and approval of our project.

Communications Strategy Guide

Following the Communications Strategy Guide, and in particular, the Science Communication Framework, we targeted 3 main audience types for our outreach efforts. These audiences include academic staff and students at Imperial, members of the public with no relation to synthetic biology and children/teenagers. Each outreach effort was optimized for its target audience and effort was taken to optimize for circumstances around the outreach effort. Lastly for most of our outreach efforts, feedback given was either recorded or verbally.

We also wanted to gauge how our project may be implemented in the future. Surveys that were done to better characterize members of the general public's opinions of our technology and synthetic biology have shown to be inconclusive in correlating knowledge of synthetic biology and opposition of general use of synthetic biology. Hence outreach regarding future implementing our project have to keep into account bioethics and better show the potential beneficial effects of implementing our technology. With these conclusions in mind, we decided to host an art exhibition that would better visualize these potential beneficial effects, as well as a socio-ethics discussion to better address the ethics of controlling life.

Art Exhibition

We commissioned several artists to create art pieces for us. We will be displaying some of these pieces at the Giant Jamboree and have brought several of them to the Fair events below.

New Scientist Live!

We attended both New Scientist Live and Fresher’s Fair. At both events, we were doing outreach for synthetic biology as well as discussing with the public about our project. At New Scientist Live we were also collaborating with the Oxford team.

Board Game

We designed a board game as well as a video game to highlight key concepts in synthetic biology.

Socio-ethics Discussion

We hosted a debate in collaboration with the synthetic biology society at Imperial College where we discuss the socio-ethical implications of synthetic biology as a field, as well as with specific regards to our project. We were able to gather many perspectives on our project as a result of this discussion and will put it to good use integrating it in our project.

Synbio outreach at Imperial

Cuz we're cool and stuff