Team:US AFRL CarrollHS/Human Practices

Human Outreach

As a team, we are present at many of our school events such as schedule pick up day, various club days, and parent-teacher conferences. We had a poster station and actively pass out flyers at these events to spread the word about our team. These events are an effective way to reach an audience that is interested in the work we are doing. These flyers are also a way to stir an interest in next years team so that we can continue the team for future years. We also reach parents this way, and we get to address many of there concerns with destroying biofilms and with the superstitions of genetically modified organisms. These types of open-ended conversation give the public a better understanding of the benefits of using our engineered microbe.

First year member Chris Guptil talking to a student at our high school about Synthetic Biology!

Advanced BioFuels USA

Along with educating students at our high school and local grade schools, we also made an effort to educate the public as a whole about synthetic biology and iGEM. Thanks to Advanced Biofuels USA, we were able to do this by publishing an article on their website. Additionally, we made a music video about synthetic biology and iGEM to further raise public awareness of synthetic biology. We posted this on our social media, and Advanced Biofuels USA also linked to the video on their website.

Advanced Biofuels Article

Music Video on Advanced Biofuels Website

You can also watch the video on our home page.

Starting a new iGEM team

Virginia Tech contacted our team about trying to start a team of their own. We spoke a lot about what iGEM was and how to create a successful team. Virginia Tech’s science department focused a lot on the team aspect in their learning, and that is one of the reasons they were thinking about starting an iGEM team. We discussed last year’s project and this year's project and how it fits in with iGEM. Also, speaking about the concerns that they may have with microbiology in industry.

Input from Industry

Over the summer, the team traveled and spoke with various companies and people with biofuel knowledge. For example, the team took a trip to Cleveland, Ohio to see Beckett who manufactures combustion burners. We spoke with them about the push towards biofuel is ruining many of the older infrastructures that were not designed to be able to stand the different makeup of the fuel. One of Beckett's main issues was the contamination of B20 or 20% biodiesel that accelerated many of the agings of components of their burners. Our team told the people at Beckett about our solution to use our engineered microbe to prevent other microbial growth. Within our project, we spoke about trying to avoid microbial growth instead of trying to kill the mix of bacteria and fungi that make up the biofilm.

The team also traveled to Marathon, a national petroleum manufacturer, in Cincinnati, Ohio to speak about biofuels. The company in recent years has had an interest starting to manufacture biofuels. The team talked to a chemical engineer on site at Marathon about some of the problems the biofuel industry is facing with contamination. They conveyed that all of the contamination that was happening did not happen when making the fuel it was the transportation and storage of the fuel. He was concerned with adding more microbiology and how this would affect the way the biofilms would form and if it would even help.

Finally, we spoke to Scott Fenwick who is the technical director of the National Biodiesel Board. He expressed concerns about having more microbiology in the fuel, and he gave us many big picture ideas about how he believed that the contamination of tanks would be eliminated within about ten years. As a team, we told Scott Fenwick about how our project would not be designed to destroy an existing biofilm, but prevent a biofilm from forming. He did think that would work better, but he still emphasized those earlier points about adding more microbiology, and he said he would feel better about adding our microbe if there was some time kill switch or safety net within our project.

The team visiting Beckett and learning about biofuel related problems in the industry

The team visiting the Cincinnati Refining Division, a subsidiary of Marathon that produces biofuels!

The team members and their mentor Chia discuss biofuels with the Beckett representative

An experiment run by Beckett showing contamination of biofuels

Team members Max and Hayley talking to Scott Fenwick, the technical director of the National Biodiesel Board, during a conference call