Over the course of one week, from September 16th till September 20th, four different schools sent an average of 30 students for a workshop organized and run by our team. The competition was advertised to the schools through their counsellors as well as through flyers describing our competition.
The flyer for this workshop series can be found here.
Given the high level of responses we got at 171 registrations, we had to select students on a first-come-first- serve basis as we could only accommodate 30 students per school due to the lab capacity available.
The workshop’s primary focus was biology and engineering. Every workshop ran from 9:45 am until 2 :00 pm. A summary of the breakdown of each day’s events is shown in Table 1. The workshop was kickstarted with an introduction to iGEM, the different tracks available, emphasizing the global scale of the competition as well as the fact that high school, graduate as well as undergraduate teams were eligible to participate. They were also introduced briefly to the field of synthetic biology.
During the introduction, the students were told that they will be contacted in a week with information about a competition for which they could form their own teams. They were not, however, informed of the specifics at the time so as to be fair to students whose workshops were later in the week.
The students were then introduced briefly to the field of synthetic biology, then split into two seperate groups, for the engineering and biology workshops.
On the Biology side, the concept of transformation as well as general terms such as plasmids, recombinant DNA, vector and gene regulation were explained to the students in a presentation form.
As a part of our outreach program for this year, we hosted a youth debate, in collaboration with the Emirates Youth Council, under the Minister of Youth, relating to synthetic biology. The Youth Debate is an initiative launched by the Ministry of Youth that brings together experts and young minds to discuss issues of extreme importance to the nation, region, and the world. During 45 minute segments, two teams formally debate a thoughtfully crafted argument, that is followed with a vote by a panel of judges and the audience to decide on a winning team.
The Youth Debate held by the NYUAD iGEM team was on the topic : “ Is synthetic biology the solution to world hunger?”. THis event was the first ever Youth Debate in English and was also the first to involve a scientific topic. The event was held on the 10th of September at the NYUAD Campus. Her Excellency Mariam Al Mehairi, Minister of State for Food Security, Professor Rashid Ali, Research Assistant Professor, Khalifa Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and Professor Alexis Gambis, Professor of Biology and Film and New Media, New York University Abu Dhabi served in the panel of judges. The affirmative team proposed that investing in synthetic biology was the solution to world hunger along with many other problems. The competitive team proposed that food policy programs and food management programs would be the quicker and practical solution to world hunger. Both teams consisted of a member of the iGEM team, a non-science major student from NYUAD and a student from American University of Sharjah. This diversity in the teams made sure that the debate not only addressed the scientific perspective of things but also put it in context within the bigger picture. The ethics behind food policy programs, short term and long term benefits of artificial food production, the effects of both options in the local economy and the possible change in power dynamics between nations after introduction of synthetic food production were few topics addressed in the debate.
The debate served as a great introduction to the real life applications of synthetic biology and put into perspective what its influence will be in the UAE and around the world. H.E. Mariam also addressed the gathering and gave a short introduction to the current food programs she is working on.
STEM out of the box was a workshop by an NYU Abu Dhabi student interest called weSTEM. Members of the iGEM team collaborated with the organisers of the workshop by helping in the planning and execution of the workshop. The workshop focused on design thinking and designing for the best user experience, with numerous restrictions and conditions. The high school students were divided into groups and asked to create a house, limited by 240 square feet, catered to a particular group of people and their constraints. The students were then asked to create powerpoint presentations to present their work and to receive constructive criticism from their peers.
