Bed bug infestations are increasing every year both in Marseille and all over the world. The origin of our breaking bugs project was this increase in infections and awareness. We wanted to help our local community as well as the whole world. We engaged in a dialog with the local community by going to as many fairs and gatherings as possible, with three main messages to deliver:

     What is iGEM?

     What are bed bugs and how to prevent infestations?

     Engaging the public in the breaking bugs project.

Science Fair

Science festival

Social housing convention

Biotechnology forum

In collaboration with Polytech Marseille, we were given the opportunity to attend the 19th biotechnology forum. This yearly forum enables participants to exchange with experts on the latest biotechnology advances as it brings students and professionals together. Conferences are held to address the current challenges of biotechnology, which now play a major role in the health and environmental sectors. This year, the main topic was Transgenesis in support of Health and Environment. Apart from the conferences which were organized during this two-day event, Polytech alumni were invited to present their professional careers and talk about their current jobs and stands had been set up for the whole duration of the event. It allowed two companies, two schools and two institutions to make contact with students. The companies Novartis and Beckman Coulter were given the opportunity to explain the way they operate. Kedge Business school and the IAE presented their double degree. As for the institutions, Grand Luminy - mostly financed by the government and specialized in helping start-ups develop - and our team, iGEM Aix-Marseille were present.

During a thirty-minute-long conference we explained what iGEM is and succinctly described our project aiming at :

• Presenting our project to engineering students
• Promoting iGEM organization and synthetic biology

In order to :

• Share our iGEM experience
• Stimulate students’ awareness as to the use of synthetic biology
• But also, to seek out new team members for the 2019 iGEM competition edition.

It allowed us to get students’, teachers’ and synthetic biology experts’ feedback. A lot of questions were raised and constructive criticisms were shared, showing public interest. This questioning explored the technicity as well as the ethic part of the project. Altogether, it permitted us to:

• Perfect and polish our project
• Put our project into perspective.

Interested students had the opportunity to freely ask their questions to our team members on our exhibition stand and so to go deeper in the description of the project. It allowed us to develop in detail our project and to explain precisely how to take part in the next Aix Marseille team.

By sharing our experience with teachers, students and synthetic biology experts, it enabled us to see through our project and to discuss about ethic and perspectives. It was an important step toward gaining a better understanding of potential issues that we will have to consider for the further development of the Breaking Bugs project.

European researchers night

communication, news and radio

After our commitment through various events in Marseille, we wanted to extend our communication. For that, we have to contact the local press, the radio as well as the television channel France 3. After various interviews about our project and the competition, we had several articles that appeared in various newspapers known in our region as the 20 minutes or La Provence. Regarding television and radio, we had the chance to explain our project to the cameras of the France 3 Television team and to switch to Radio Grenouille.