Team:Tec-Monterrey/Public Engagement

In Mexico:

Only 21.5% of the population has a good understanding regarding scientific studies.
70% believe antibiotics are used in the treatment of viral and bacterial diseases.
45.7% believe that scientist, due to their knowledge, are dangerous.

Source: CONACYT-INEGI, Encuesta sobre la Percepción Pública de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (ENPECYT), 2017

The population of Mexico often perceives science as something beyond their understanding and reach, this lead to a poor basic education and promotion of STEM fields and also fewer investment from companies and the government in science research and education.

This overview gave us the motivation to work really hard towards creating something that could contribute to change the perspective of people in our country about science and hopefully, the initiative from governmental departments and industry companies towards supporting science research and STEM education fields.

We firmly believe the diffusion and understanding of science is a huge area of opportunity in our country, this being said, we took huge responsibility on creating spaces where we could establish a public dialogue about synthetic biology, create the ability of discussing the science behind synthetic biology and mainly, create new scientific curiosity in people of all ages and races.

As a team, we didn't want what happened in the lab to stay in the lab

We invested months of hard work into the Public and Education Engagement component of our project, accomplishing an outstanding reach of over 200,000 people through our social media impact and the different activities we conducted, such as: a National Congress of Science, an After iGEM networking event, a National Education Tour, Workshops, a video collaboration with Curiosamente (an educational youtube channel with over 1 million subscribers), articles in magazines of national reach, three national presentations in science conferences, one international presentation at GCURS at RICE University, attendance to two iGEM meetups and a college credit class: Science Seminar.

National Congress of Sciences 2018

Dates: September 14 & 15, 2018
General description
The National Congress of Science was the biggest and most important event organized by Tec Monterrey 2018 Team to interact directly with people with scientific affinities, it reached the participation of over 200 undergraduate and graduate students who came from 18 different states of México to our university: Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey.
The National Congress of Science gave students the opportunity to learn about topics such as: chemistry, nanotechnology, biotechnology, nanomedicine, synthetic biology, and ecology.
Objectives:

To disseminate science among Mexican undergraduate and graduate students to encourage, both their personal development and the development of our country through science.
To have the opportunity to interact with the scientific community of all around our country, for understanding different points of view and perspectives about the present and future of Mexican research.
To gain a wider network of all the dispersed people with research related affiliations and having the opportunity of connecting points for the creation and development of further projects.

General Content:

12 conferences from experts of the fields: Biology, Chemistry, Nanomedicine and Sustainable Development.
1 Discussion Panel about the iGEM competition.
6 workshops where students experienced with chemical and biological concepts in the laboratory.
After iGEM (Networking Event).

After iGEM

Date: September 15th, 2018
After iGEM was an extension to our National Congress of Science. The event consisted on a networking session with the participation of iGEM Ambassador Camilo Chávez, iGEM Instructor Heber Torres, ex-iGEMers, iGEM judge Carolina Elizondo, Scintia co-founder Minerva Castellanos, ETH Zurich graduate Mercedes Vázquez, Student Association of Genomic Biotechnology (AsEBioGen) and an attendance of approximately 50 undergraduate and graduate students from STEM majors.
We aimed to spark interest in biotechnology and synthetic biology projects by conducting a panel of discussion and a networking event with iGEM alumni.
AfteriGEM opened up as a space where attendees had the opportunity to interact with each other and create bonds between projects and teams. During the event, the iGEM community at Tecnológico de Monterrey helped and assessed a group of students on creating their own iGEM team at their campus in Saltillo, San Nicolás de los Garza.

National Educational Tour 2018

Dates: April-September 2018
Education in our country is often seen as a privilege rather than a right and we wanted to created something that would contribute to change that, that's how the iGEM National Educational Tour 2018 was born. We didn't want what happened in the lab to stay in the lab.
Most of us coming from rural towns and knowing first-hand what it is like to not have a lot of opportunities for personal and academic development, we felt the responsibility to share the knowledge we were acquiring with as many students as possible all around our country.
We visited five states and imparted conferences and workshops for high school and undergraduate students.

Veracruz

Michoacán

Jalisco

Chihuahua

Nuevo León I

Nuevo León II

Institution:
COBAEV
State:
Veracruz
Activity:
Synthetic Biology Workshop

Institution:
CEJA
State:
Michoacán
Activity:
Conferences

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Jalisco
Activity:
Conference

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Chihuahua
Activity:
Networking sessions

Institution:
Tec de Monterrey
State:
Nuevo León
Activity:
Open Lab to general public

Institution:
Instituto Vicente Suárez
State:
Nuevo León
Activity:
Conference

Workshops

Mathematical modeling of genetic circuits

With the help of CONACYT, we brought Jesús Siller, Oxford Ph.D. candidate, to our Campus, where he imparted a two session workshop about mathematical modeling of genetic circuits to a selected group of undergraduate students from Tec de Monterrey, UANL and UDEM.

Petri dish art

As a team, we imparted a petri dish art workshop were undergraduate and high school students created their own artwork after having a theoretical session of synthetic biology.

Science Seminar

Dates: September 14 & 15, 2018
In collaboration with SACI (Science and Engineering Alumni Society) from Tec de Monterrey we created Seminar of Science, a tuition free course for regional universities of Nuevo León as: Tecnológico de Monterrey, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (Schools of Chemistry, Biology and Physics) and Universidad de Monterrey, where experts in different science fields from around the world shared with the student community their experience and trayectory.
We had an attendance of over 130 people per session , all from different majors such as: B. S. Biotechnology Engineering, B. S. Physics, B. S. Chemistry and Nanotechnology Engineering, B.S. Food Industry Engineering, B.S. Sustainable Development Engineering, B.S. Mechanical Engineering with minor in Industrial Engineering, B.S. Mechanical Engineering with minor in Environmental Engineering, B.S. Chemical Engineering with minor in Industrial Engineering, B.S. Innovation and Development Engineering.
Through these 10 sessions, we were able to discuss science while creating a network between researchers and students pursuing research opportunities.

Session with researcher and professor Marion Brunck about cell Therapies

Diffusion

Magazine Articles

We were interviewed by three magazines of national reach about our project E-Coding and our lab dynamic.

Milenio

Tec Review

CONECTA

Milenio Noticias
For the full article, you can visit:

Tec Review
For the full article, you can visit:

CONECTA
For the full article, you can visit:

Congress Presentations

We did four poster presentations about E-Coding at the following Congress meetings:

Genobiotec

Expociencias

ConexiónTec

GCURS

Genobiotec is one of the most important national congress about biotechnology and genomics, here we established a public dialogue about E-Coding with researchers in synthetic biology, professionals and investors.

Expociencias is a program from the National network of youth activities in Science and Technology whose objective is to promote the participation of young people on scientific and research projects.

ConexiónTec is an institutional event from Tec de Monterrey where students expose projects that address engineering problems relevant to industry and society, where we won first place in the category of Research and Development of improvement.

The Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCURS) is hosted by Rice University in Houston, Texas. GCURS provides current undergraduates the opportunity to present their original research discoveries to scholars from around the world. iGEM Tec-Monterrey had the opportunity of presenting project with iGEM Rice and having a first real interaction with international research community.

Youtube
Collaboration with Curiosamente (click on the image to see the video):

We were lucky to have the opportunity of collaborating with Curiosamente, a youtube channel with over 1 Million subscribers, oriented to creating animated videos explaining cultural and scientific phenomenon. The video was about biotechnology and genomic modifications, and a introduction of our project with more than 150, 000 views.
Facebook
We increased our facebook page following in over 2500 likes in the last year. (foto) Our promotional posters reached over 87,000 people inside the social media platform. The registry of our different events had over 700 replies all together.

Team:Tec-Monterrey/Public Engagement

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