Designing a thoughtful iGEM project requires asking which problems synthetic biology can best help solve and exploring the impacts of your work in the world. At iGEM we believe these societal considerations should be upfront and integrated throughout the design and execution of synthetic biology projects.
Why are Human Practices Important?
Through the Human Practices elements of their competition, iGEM teams consider whether their projects are safe, responsible and good for the world. They creatively explore issues relating (but not limited) to the ethics, safety, security, and sustainability of their projects. These issues are complex and often do not have simple answers. Teams therefore conduct public engagement and dialogue; educating while inviting public input to shape the direction of their work.
Our approaches
“A society that permits biology to become an engineering discipline, that allows that science to slip into the role of changing the living world without trying to understand it, is a danger to itself ” (Woese, 2004)
Human Practices involves assessing our project in relation to society. When pitching our idea as a means of unifying electronics and synthetic biology, we struggled to think about not only the potential applications of the technology, but also how our technology could be implemented. We quickly realized the need of communicating with people of different backgrounds as their unique perspectives help shape potential applications and predict societal impact for our technology.
Our approach for Human Practices therefore revolves around the concept of communication. To maximize efficiency of communication to do better IHP and outreach, we have designed both a team-communication app as well as a science communication framework and custom guide which we have used extensively to guide our IHP and Outreach. A short PDF guide summarizing all we have done for Human Practices, Outreach and Education is downloadable below:
