Difference between revisions of "Team:IIT Delhi/Public Engagement"

School Visits

The seed of education gets sowed in the school.

Being one of the most experienced Indian iGEM teams iGEM IIT Delhi engages with hundreds of people every year. But we have noticed that many Indians are unaware about the prospects of synthetic biology and moreover are afraid of it. Hence, this year we aimed to promote the cause of synthetic biology. To achieve this, we began our endeavor in multiple schools of Delhi, where enthusiastic young students get to know the theory behind science but rarely do they get to interact with it or perform exciting experiments on what they are taught.

Hence, we designed hands-on synthetic biology workshops, where kids isolated the DNA of fruits and vegetables and experienced working with E. coli and how it can be modified to perform the desired function(we had displayed the expression of sfGFP and mKate2 protein) while understanding all the safety procedures and precautions one needs to take before working with biological systems. Amidst all this, we explained the multiple ways in which synthetic biology is being applied to solve some of the most complicated problems in the world, such as treatment of genetic disorders, tackling the issue of excess waste production etc.

The workshops were conducted in 6 prominent schools of Delhi, and we have interacted with more than 300 students, investing at least 4 hours on each session. iGEM IIT Delhi has received immense appreciation for their work from school students and principals alike, and we have been invited to multiple science fairs in Delhi to promote iGEM and synthetic biology further.

We also conducted an orientation session in NIN 100, which is a mandatory course for the fresh entrants of IIT Delhi, it has a very important role to play in terms of informing and arousing interest among the students. Students learn about the exciting work being done in various disciplines of engineering and entrepreneurship opportunities. iGEM IIT Delhi prides itself on being counted in the proud company of speakers like Prof. Ramgopal Rao, Mr. Pratyush Kumar(Boeing India VP), Mr. Pankaj Chaddha(Zomato Founder and CEO) and many more. Professors and around 900 undergraduate students attended the orientation. The main objective was to introduce students to synthetic biology, enlighten them about the futuristic technologies in the field and encourage them to research in the field. An emphasis was also laid on the impact these technologies have an in our day to day lives. We also held a 30 minutes long Q/A session where we discussed our current project and foundational science behind it.

You can click on the interactive map below, to take a peek into the way iGEM IIT Delhi has interacted with people:-

×

Bal Bharti School, Pitampura