Team:UCopenhagen/Human Practices
Introduction
We have aimed towards incorporating Human Practice-thinking into as many aspects and phases of our work as possible. Therefore we did already in the choosing of our project decide some factors that we found important to take into consideration when choosing our project: First and foremost we wanted to make something that was not going to interfere with nature or human bodies. We wanted to make a product that would make a positive difference in the world taking into account certain societal factors such as safety and usability, avoiding harm to the environment, and considering ethical downsides.
In order to find the right idea, we met up with different people and the team members spoke with their families, friends, peers and professors in order to find ideas on wich problems we could potentially solve with our project. We spent weeks discussing up-to-date topics such as microplastic pollution, radiation, antibiotic resistance, coculture and much more. You can read more about our choosing process here ….
We have also been concerned about safety at an early stage and has therefore contacted the Danish Center for Biopreparedness and biosafety in order to get their evaluation on our idea. Besides from that we had an extensive dialogue with the iGEM safety council and our internal safety officers. You can read more about their evaluation and our safety choices based on the feedback here ….
After choosing our project, we spoke with some different experts in the protein and space medicine field about which proteins would be relevant for space travel. We got a lot of interesting input and it had a big impact of how we now perceive the uses of our products and the problems it can potentially solve. You can read more about the experts and our integration of their input here …
When we were at Nordic iGEM conference in Lund, we noticed that we had a lot in common with the other Danish iGEM team, DTU Biobuilders. We decided to propose for a collaboration with DTU and at the same time Exeter asked us about collaborating. We ended up collaborating all three together. You can read more about our collaboration with DTU and Exeter here...