We got in touch with Veneta Valeria Gerganova, responsible of the “Figure 1.A” exposition in Lausanne, Switzerland. The aim of the exhibition is to celebrate the beauty of science and all the hard work behind it through images, submitted by members of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at UNIL. A selection of photos selected by a multidisciplinary jury and then portrayed in the “La Sonnette” Gallery, in the City Center of Lausanne, opened to the general public. Following this discussion inspired, we created a photo contest among 2018 iGEM Team, and photos that we collected during the competition are exposed on our wiki. This meeting also highlighted the importance of visuals for our project presentation, shared images, graphics, colors, layout of ideas, legends, etc. It led us to realize the importance of visuals at first sight during a presentation, poster presentation, and we hence payed more attention to these attributes in the designs that we created later on for CAPOEIRA.
Team:EPFL/Public Engagement
Education & Public Engagement
Reaching out with the public and the scientific community was important to us. Here is our journey
Figure 1.A Art Exhibition
During our study of the ethical aspects about CAPOEIRA, after some brainstorming sessions we realised that Art could be a tool to link the bridge between the general public and scientific research, focusing on biology in particular. We believed that this was a great opportunity to spread awareness of synthetic biology and biology to an audience in a way that is appealing and less intimidating.
Planet santé
Plant Santé (translated to “Health Planet”) is an annual exhibition event that unites distinguished institutions and the majority of the major players of health in the Romandie region of Switzerland to host a four day event of experiences, emotion, interactivity for the general public to take on the questions of health in the world today.
It was a great event that exhibited the new innovations in healthcare as well as an empowering event that educates the public about healthcare and keeps them updated on the latest advances in the field. There was a lot of student representation from our university EPFL and our neighbour University of Lausanne (UNIL) that seeks to educate the public on the research about healthcare that is currently taking place and providing an insight on the way it may impact the healthcare industry in the near future.
For our project, what was interesting about this event was the unity of all the stakeholders in healthcare exchanging information and entering fruitful discussions. In that spirit, we attended a roundtable discussion at the event concerning our project in order to develop an overview of the needs of cancer treatment from the different stakeholders titled “Cancer : The Indispensable Partnership Between Fundamental Research and Patients”
iGEM Summer School Koniz
We had the opportunity to collaborate with the Könitz School , near Bern in Switzerland, to integrate Synthetic Biology into their Summer School program on the 5th of July at our laboratory at EPFL. This one-week summer school allows about twenty students to discover our campus, the facilities and laboratories as well as the research conducted. Within this framework, we offered them a workshop on Synthetic Biology, consisting of a presentation explaining field, the iGEM competition as well as our project CAPOEIRA. Then we guided them towards a basic experimental practice of synthetic biology based on an Educational Kit designed by last year’s EPFL iGEM Team.
This first presentation allowed us to target the pedagogical elements to be highlighted in our presentation to capture attention as well as the key technical points that require more precision for the audience's understanding. We also took note of areas where we could improve our presentation skills with regards to the oral fluency, rhythm of speech and clarity of explanations for example. We got to present in front of an audience for the first time, which highlighted our strengths and areas of improvement in presentation skills!
