Team:Bulgaria
THE IDEA
Our project idea was inspired mostly by a donation campaign for a colleague of ours, organised in our faculty. We dived head-first into this problem and uncovered that the average survival rates for Bulgarian patients with cystic fibrosis are far lower than those for patients living in more developed countries. One of the main reasons behind that contrast is untimely diagnosis. This served as a huge push for us to try and develop our system and, in a way, try to give a second chance to patients by providing timely diagnosis. We presented the problem and our solution at various different science-oriented events - Sofia Science Festival 2018, for instance. We also organized our own campaign, The 65 SynBio Roses, in which we had people draw and/or color roses, some of which - with iGEM chromoproteins. This way, we managed to introduce people not only to an important issue in need of a solution, but to synthetic biology’s problem-solving potential, too. We chose our very publicly oriented approach in order to engage as large of an audience as possible. This helped us learn the perspectives of people that do not know much (or at all) about science and showed us the many ways others’ opinions and ideas can have an impact on your own.