Public Engagement
Author:Bozitao Zhong
OVERVIEW
For education and public engagement human practice, we spent a lot of efforts on introducing our project, the iGEM competition and synthetic biology to the society. We can divide our work into 4 parts, outreach, visualization, analyse and communication. In outreach prat, we’ve organized exhibitions, propagation and providing teaching support to spread the concept of synthetic biology as well as our own feeling to which. Also, to make our project more acceptable by common people, we exhibit and give out various art pieces including postcards, bookmarks, leaflets and art entities as the visualization part. Analyze is a crawling method which can be used by other teams which can help for iGEM data analyse. Also, we attend conferences and seminars to communicate with professors and other teams about our project.
OUTREACH
This part our theme is to introduce our project, the iGEM competition and synthetic biology to the society. So we held several activities to accomplish this task.
First, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the development of synthetic biology and the 10th anniversary of the establishment of SJTU-BioX-Shanghai iGEM team, we organized a science exhibition on the topic of synthetic biology to promote the development of the discipline and provide the public with opportunities to understand science and participate in science. The exhibition achieved very good response in the library. In the 20 days, our exhibition attracted a large number of people to visit.
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Exhibition
科技展览是传播科学技术思想，普及知识的重要手段【1】。在公众场所开展的科技展览，具有覆盖面大、人流量大、内容详细、成本可控等特点，是进行公众科普教育活动的重要方式之一。展览结合讲解，可以进一步发挥展览的科普作用，在科技工作者与民众之间架起有效沟通的桥梁，促进科学知识走出实验室，走出期刊，走到更多的人身边，为民众建立起关于科技发展的直观认知，提升民众的科学素养和对于科学的兴趣。
科学技术史是关于科学技术产生、发展及其规律的科学，因其跨学科综合性和对科技发展脉络的研究，被公认为是进行科学教育的有力工具。20世纪40年代以后，科学的社会功能日益凸显，库恩（Thomas Kuhn）提出：科学史是连接科学教育与人文文化的重要桥梁。他提出科学教育过程中，加强人文与科学史的教育力度比科学的其他任何一个方面更多的决定着我们对科学本质的想象以及发明和发现在科技发展中的作用。20世纪中后期，以卡逊（Rachel Caison）《寂静的春天》引发的公众对于科学的思考，使当时的学者认识到科技界有必要让公众知道科学与技术的真相是什么。马修斯（Michael R. Matthews）认为推行科学教育最好的办法是将科学教育与科学的史学维度和哲学维度相结合，当公众掌握了科学的基本知识，了解了科学进步多元性和科学本质之后，科学教育所面临的大部分理论和实践操作层面问题就可以得到很好的解决【2】。
欲行大道，必先为史，合成生物学的发展也是一样。1978 年，Szybalski 在《基因》(Gene
) 期刊上就诺贝尔生理学或医学奖颁给发现DNA 限制酶的Daniel Nathans、Werner Arber 与 Hamilton Smith发表评论道 ：限制酶技术将带领我们进入合成生物学的新时代。这是合成生物学的发展方向首次在学界被提出来【3】。从1978年到2018年，合成生物学走过了四十年的发展，其概念逐渐丰富，技术日益进步，研究领域愈加深入，成果也层出不穷。而公众对于“合成生物学”这个词语还非常陌生，对其背后的思想和逻辑依然知之甚少。因此，梳理合成生物学的发展历史，并通过展览的方式呈现给公众，是一项意义重大的工作。
Igem比赛作为合成生物学领域中的顶级比赛，代表了科研领域新生力量的眼界和努力。我们SJTU-BioX-Shanghai队伍，建于2008年，到2018年，已经是队伍第十年参加igem的比赛。十年中，队伍致力于以科学的视角关注基础科学、医学、社会学角度的问题，以合成生物学的方式为人们更好的生活提供可能性。在对于合成生物学、科学与社会的思考上，也积累了许多收获。在合成生物学四十周年，SJTU-BioX-Shanghai建队十周年之际，我们举办了合成生物学主题科普展，以促进学科的发展，为公众提供了解科学、参与科学的机会。
合成生物学展览在上海市闵行区东川路800号，上海交通大学图书馆主馆东展区举行，展期为2018.08.20——2018.09.10。为期二十天的展览共分为“走进合成生物学”和“十年历程，合成辉煌”两个部分。第一部分“走进合成生物学”向公众介绍了合成生物学的起源、学科思想、发展历程、典型技术、重要成果以及对于合成生物学未来的展望，通过内容翔实的文字、生动活泼的插图、通俗易懂的讲解，为公众展示了这门新兴学科的方方面面，为公众建立起当前生命科学前沿发展中一个新方向的原初印象，使公众对于科学改变生活，为人类带来福祉有了新的认知，也为公众更加理性的对待科技发展带来的种种影响提供了新的探讨角度。第二部分“十年历程，合成辉煌”对SJTU-BioX-Shanghai十年以来的建队理念、参赛历程、各年项目进行了回顾，进一步扩大了igem在公众中的影响力，也向公众展示了igemer不熄的探索精神、严谨的科学态度、创新的研究理念、宽广的社会情怀。
展览取得良好的反响，在二十天中，我们的展览吸引了大量公众前来参观。在展览现场的留言册上，我们收到了许多热心观众的反馈，表达了对于科技发展的赞叹，对于科研工作者的鼓励，对于科技带来更美好未来的信心和期待，以及对于队伍今年再接再厉，取得理想成绩的祝福。
[1]喻小华.科技展览对提升公民科学素质的重要作用[J].长江丛刊,2017(09):95-97.
[2]"科技史在科技馆展览中的作用及表现形式研究"课题组. 科技史在科技馆展览中的作用及表现形式研究报告[A]. .科技馆研究报告集（2006-2015）下册[C].:中国科学技术馆,2017:21.
[3]熊燕,陈大明,杨琛,赵国屏.合成生物学发展现状与前景[J].生命科学,2011,23(09):826-837.
Science exhibitions are an important means of disseminating scientific and technological ideas and popularizing knowledge [1]. The science and technology exhibitions carried out in public places have the characteristics of large coverage, large flow of people, detailed content and controllable costs, which are one of the important ways to carry out public science education activities. The exhibition can be combined with explanations to further develop the scientific role of the exhibition, bridge the effective communication between scientists and the public. This can promote scientific knowledge go out of the laboratory and the journal to more common people, as well as establish an intuitive understanding of the development of science and technology for the people, which can enhance the scientific literacy of the people and their interest in science.
The history of science and technology is a science about the emergence, development and regularity of science and technology. Because of its interdisciplinary comprehensiveness and research on the development of science and technology, it is recognized as a powerful tool for scientific education. After the 1940s, the social function of science became increasingly prominent. Thomas Kuhn proposed that the history of science is an important bridge connecting science education and human culture. He proposed that in the process of science education, strengthening the education of the history of humanities and science more than any other aspect of science determines our imagination of the nature of science and the role of invention and discovery in the development of science and technology. In the middle and late 20th century, the public's thinking about science triggered by Rachel Caison's Silent Spring made scholars at that time aware of the need for the scientific community to let the public know what the truth of science and technology is. Michael R. Matthews believes that the best way to promote science education is to combine science education with the historical and philosophical dimensions of science. When the public masters the basic knowledge of science, they understand the diversity of science and the nature of science. After that, most of the theoretical and practical operational aspects of science education can be solved very well [2].
As the ancient Chinese proverb says, to make great process, it must rely on the history first. The development of synthetic biology is the same. In 1978, Szybalski commented in the journal Gene that restriction enzyme technology will lead us into a new era of synthetic biology after Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber and Hamilton Smith discovered the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of DNA restriction enzymes. This is the first time that the development of synthetic biology has been proposed in the academic field [3]. From 1978 to 2018, synthetic biology has gone through forty years of development. Its concept has gradually enriched and technology has been increasingly advanced. As a result, research fields have become more in-depth and results have emerged endlessly. But the public is still very unfamiliar with the term "synthetic biology", and know little about the ideas and logic behind it. Therefore, it is a significant work to sort out the development history of synthetic biology and present it to the public through scientific exhibitions.
As the top competition in the field of synthetic biology, the iGEM competition represents the vision and efforts of the new force in the field of scientific research. Our team SJTU-BioX-Shanghai, built in 2008, participates in iGEM competition for the tenth year in 2018. In the past ten years, the team has been focusing on the issues of basic science, medicine, and sociology from a scientific perspective, which has provided possibilities for people's better life in a synthetic biology. We make a significant progress in thinking about synthetic biology, science, and society. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the development of synthetic biology and the 10th anniversary of the establishment of SJTU-BioX-Shanghai, we organized a science exhibition on the topic of synthetic biology to promote the development of the discipline and provide the public with opportunities to understand science and participate in science.
The exhibition of synthetic biology was held at No. 800 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, and was held in the East Exhibition Area of the main library of Shanghai Jiaotong University Library. The exhibition period was 2018.08.20-2018.09.10. The 20-day exhibition is divided into two parts: “Into Synthetic Biology” and “Ten Years of History, Synthetic Brilliance”. The first part, "Into Synthetic Biology", introduces the public to the origins of synthetic biology, subject ideas, development processes, typical technologies, important achievements, and prospects for the future of synthetic biology. Through the informative texts, lively illustrations, and easy-to-understand explanations, the public is presented to all aspects of this emerging discipline, establishing the original impression of the new direction in the development of the current life sciences for the public, and making the public has a new understanding that the science can bring happiness to human beings It also provides a new perspective for the public to more rationally deal with the various effects brought about by the development of science and technology. The second part, "Ten Years of History, Synthetic Brilliance", reviewed our ten-year team SJTU-BioX-Shanghai's building concept, the course of the competition, and the projects of each year, which further expands the influence of iGEM in the public and also shows iGEMer's spirit of exploration, rigorous scientific attitude, innovative research philosophy and broad social feelings to the public.
The exhibition achieved very good response. In the 20 days, our exhibition attracted a large number of people to visit. In the guest book on the exhibition site, we received feedback from many enthusiastic audiences, expressing their appreciation for the development of science and technology, the encouragement of researchers, the confidence and expectation of a better future for technology, and the blessing of our team to achieve the desired results and have continued success this year.
[1]喻小华.科技展览对提升公民科学素质的重要作用[J].长江丛刊,2017(09):95-97.
[2]"科技史在科技馆展览中的作用及表现形式研究"课题组. 科技史在科技馆展览中的作用及表现形式研究报告[A]. .科技馆研究报告集（2006-2015）下册[C].:中国科学技术馆,2017:21.
[3]熊燕,陈大明,杨琛,赵国屏.合成生物学发展现状与前景[J].生命科学,2011,23(09):826-837.
Besides, we participate in School of Life Science open day and introduce our project and synthetic biology to other students in our school.
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On the afternoon of October 10, our team together with SJTU-software team had a poster session at the open day at our school. We met lots of freshmen of school of life science, and we have introduced our project, iGEM competition and synthetic biology theory to them. They said they are willing to join our team next year and want to attribute themselves for synthetic biology.
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As well, we went forward to rural areas in China to provide teaching support about basic biology knowledge. Student were all enthusiastic about our synthetic biology works. Those brand-new thoughts arouse their creativity and they also gave us some creative ideas about our work and synthetic biology.
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VISUALIZATION
How to let people get to know our thoughts? This has always been a huge question in our mind. This year, we provide a series of visualization methods to let common people to feel, see, touch and get to know us.
First, we made a series of postcards about cancer patients care and fixing mental injury. We chose some famous lines and poems attached with pictures to comfort patients by letting them know people care about them, and encourage them to look forward.
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Then, we start a program named lucky draw. It’s a common activity in Chinese young people. We designed a series of lucky draws about biological experiment. By sharing on twitter, we could we can have coherence with other iGEM teams.
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COMMUNICATION
Communication is about how we meet other teams and how we communicate our designs and thoughts. We hold and participate in several conferences where we tell about our experience and had great experience.
First, we held a seminar with professors, teachers and students. We shared our iGEM project and our lab experience. And we tell about our project’s advantages and disadvantages, its user experience and importance for society.
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Seminar
In the afternoon of October 9，about 30 undergraduates in the school of life science and biotechnology discussed our project this year with professor Zhang Dabing and Wang Canhua.He Peixiang, a member of SJTU-BioX-Shanghai, introduced this year's project from the Background， Design and the Results.Then the students and teachers have a heated discussion of our work .Most of the students feeled our project extraordinary and significant. Professor Zhang thought highly of our project and he suggested that using the purified gas vesicle protein and medicine directly capsulated in the liposome and modifying it with short peptide may lead to better diagnosis and treatment，which are more effective ,more specific and more harmless. From another point，professor Wang pointed that using what we have learned to benefit human life is the real purpose of learning modern biotechnology.
Then we participate in two conferences: 5th Conference of Chinese iGEMer Community (CCiC) and Asia-Pacific Conference. On conference, we did presentations, introduced our project with poster and received suggestions from other teams.
ANALYZE
Data analyzing has always been a usual method for iGEM human practice. But finding data has not always been so easy. This year, we plan to find the iGEM competition change by years.
We have developed a crawling method for crawl down iGEM information by python package selenium. This can be used for other teams which are also interested about iGEM competition data. We have already crawled down the Judging form and team information, which forms our analyze about iGEM competition from 2007 to now.
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