Team:Edinburgh OG/Public Engagement

PhagED: a molecular toolkit to re-sensitise ESKAPE pathogens

Human Practices: Education and Public Engagement Special Prize

Our education and public engagement aimed to design a specific iGEM induction with a series of synthetic biology teaching games and courses based on our own experience, to promote iGEM and synthetic biology. We aimed to focus on places, where iGEM and synthetic biology is less commonly known.

In order to tackle this issue, we have worked with an Edinburgh local startup, called Smart Home Education Ltd., which mostly focus on develop and expand their online educational platform. This opportunity potentially allow us to maximum our outreach. Our team successfully contacted a high school with advanced teaching resources in Macau, where there is no previous iGEM team and no synthetic biology or microbiology degree or master available in their universities. One of our team members even visited this high school and talked to their potential iGEMers and they are now planning to join iGEM in 2019 to be the first team from Macau.

During visit, our member has shared our iGEM experience, introduced our research project and some immature project ideas we had previously. Our member also introduced how human practice would be accomplished in different ways and the amazing creativity from other team in previous years, as there is and should be no limitation. He was then further introduced the work we have accomplished for human practice. As our project is to improve the productivity and property of current bioplastic manufacturing process, we have talked to different sectors related to the plastic and bioplastic industry. We have then obtained several facts regarding plastic production and recycle, which is not commonly known. For examples,
i) While massive oil are extracted everyday, plastics in landfill would work perfectly as a carbon sink if we can handle them properly.
ii) The problem of plastic recycle is far more complicated than people commonly known. Recycle plastic are all different, even if there are the same kind, this is because all plastic product property are refined through adding new material to optimise the product function or outlook. This bring difficulty in regenerating new products from recycle plastic.
iii) The industry of plastic recycle is really depending on the cost of new plastic production, which is mainly based on the price of oil. A few years ago, the industry of plastic recycle was in very difficult time because the oil price was so cheap.

Through these information sharing, our member has inspired those potential iGEMers to think outside of the box and remind them the importance of communicated with different people in the industry. Moreover, we have been continuously providing suggestions and answer their questions, as we all know iGEM competition can be a challenge.

In order to further promote iGEM and synthetic biology in Macau, we have also worked with a new Macau start up, called Yorkshire Online Academy Ltd., and together we were joining the 2018 Macau International Trade & Investment Fair to talk to sectors related to education in Macau and other international traders, providing our materials and experience to support them.

Back to the Edinburgh local region, our team presented our iGEM project to the 2017-2018, and 2018-19 University of Edinburgh MSc student cohort and discussed our experience of integrating iGEM into our MSc degree programme.