Team:DTU-Denmark/Collaborations
As a team of highly motivated university students, all of us value, not only the importance of proper education, but also the opportunity to be influenced in an early age at where your dreams develop; the world is our oyster and one should feel so. Through an unanimous vote, our team decided the education branch was one we wanted to pursuit with high ambitions. Biotechnology is still a new field in education and who would be better to develop its role in our country than a team working through their summer vacation in the name of science.
Back in April, we were present at Science in Forum - an annual science festival targeted at children of all ages. Our main purpose was to peak the visitor’s interest in biotechnology and the possibilities that come with it both on a bigger scale and related to iGem. It quickly became clear, that text-packed scientific papers was a wrong angle and by changing our methods to reaching the children’s level with Jurassic World-references and DNA-strings made out of candy, we managed to communicate the purpose of our project in broad terms to a lot of interested children as well as load them up with sugar.
It was great to see the vast expression of interest in all ages and it was an immense opportunity to practice creating material to the proper audience. It was clear to us, that we didn’t have a strong enough case as our project at this point and being questioned basic questions by kids and more detailed questions by adults, we got a head start with flaws and gaps we would have to seal to have a strong project.
The Copenhagen High School Symbiotes Project
It was our PhD. supervisor Kyle who got the idea to expand the iGEM participation in Denmark and include a high school team of students in the age of 16-19. There have been a growing interest in the High school track around the world (see Fig 1) and Philip, from the last DTU team, Tenna and Jacob therefore set out to establish a high school team in the greater Copenhagen area to compete in iGEM; and so, the project ‘Copenhagen High School Symbiotes’, CHSS for short, was born.
Fig. 1: - High school teams competing in iGEM(1)
As it would be the very first high school team from Denmark to enter iGEM, a lot of regulations and rules had to be checked with the proper authorities to make sure it was feasible. With the green-light given, CHSS started to take shape.
Firstly, by the suggestion of Philip, they got in contact with the non-profit organization Biotech Academy, located at DTU, to plan a collaboration with them as they would with more expertise facilitate the project. The project could be modeled after the Biosensor project, which is another collaboration between Biotech Academy and DTU Biobuilders.
As past and present participants of the DTU iGEM team, they could contribute with structure of the process, planning, gathering information necessary and having the needed information regarding the competition to sell it to the teachers of the different high schools. Biotech Academy, on the other hand, offered experience with teaching biotech, engaging the students and what was necessary to be allowed to work in the lab with high schoolers.
With the forward movement of the project, they realised many more benefits of the CHSS team becoming a reality. Not only would it spark an interest in synthetic biology in high schools, which had been close to zero before, but it would also make a great chance for a collaboration with future teams from DTU and hopefully inspire more teams from Denmark.
The next step was getting the faculty to confirm the project as well as the necessary budget. They all spent weeks researching, corresponding through emails and having meetings with Biotech Academy and the DTU faculty to make the plans reasonable and feasible.
However, to make sure the project stood solid when going to the faculty to get approved, and also for when sending out funding applications, they knew they needed to have the high schools behind them supporting the CHSS project.
The participants would come from different high schools and conduct their research at DTU. The high schools were chosen based on location compared to DTU, the general level of education and competitiveness, as well as the level of science taught.
It didn’t take very long until a total of 7 high schools had shown interest and so funding began. To get a strong head-start, they decided to apply for a three-year period. Many hours were spent in perfecting their applications since they knew it was a lot of money they asked for.
As they neared the Giant Jamboree they had gotten several recommendations written for their fond application and it was sent out. The entire team is waiting anxiously for the answer in January as everyone sees the great potential in a high school team.
