Team:AFCM-Egypt/Education
MinterLab
The SoundBio Lab iGEM team launched the MinterLab collaboration, a spin off the interlab concept of having scientists around the world working on one experiment and facilitating science to elementary and middle-schoolers .
To achieve this collaboration, we hosted 60 elementary and middle-school students on our campus from all over Egypt and across a range of varying schools. Our MinterLab camp utilized the field guide and program provided by the SoundBio team and lasted three consecutive days on (15th-17th of September). We divided the students randomly into 4 groups to encourage competitive learning in a friendly atmosphere.
On day 1, we started with an introduction about molecular biology, cell components and the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, then moved deeply into DNA, plasmids and restriction enzymes using cardboard models.
On day 2, the students started by recapping day 1 using a creative expression session. We then hosted the participants in our microbiology lab for the Minterlab experiment session where they swabbed everyday objects and surfaces and cultured bacteria.
On day 3, we introduced our project to them and had a creative expression session where they drew what they understood. We also included a demonstration of correct hand hygiene practices for safety. Finally, in the MinterLab results session, the students were able to see the colonies formed by the bacteria on the plate and examine them under the microscope.
By the end of the Minterlab, we were thrilled to see how the young students were excited about SynBio and its potential. We were so happy with the students that we invited them to the SynFair final presentations day to celebrate what they learned. The experience was life-changing to us, thank you SoundBio team!
Syn Fair
In our quest to make SynBio a household name, we decided we wanted to include as many age groups as possible. We started by targeting high schoolers by aiming to involve them in STEM sciences and getting them excited towards the realm of SynBio. We reached out to the Ministry of Education and declared that we wanted to collaborate on a science-fair-like activity that we named SynFair. The SynFair was intended to set an eye opener for the students to enhance their scientific passion making them possible future synthetic biology researchers. The event was held over two days with one-month interval in-between and we received students from all-over Egypt.
As for the first day; the team members were assigned to present various topics to the students including: molecular biology basics, synthetic biology, bioinformatics, biosafety, biosecurity as well as introducing our experience in iGEM through the past years. iGEM African ambassador participated in the day giving an overview about the competition and introducing the possibility of participating as high-schoolers. The students were brainstormed through the day to help them choose their topics which were presented in a poster session on the second day later on.
The students exceeded our expectations with their creative topics and marvelous poster presentations. The teams searched multiple hot topics like; obesity, genetic diseases, microbiome and cancers. The teams managed to tackle community related topics with synthetic biology tools they had learned in a friendly competition.
The judging committee included our PI, iGEM African ambassador with one instructor and our team leader as well. The posters were evaluated with a well formulated checklist in order to choose three winners who were rewarded by the college vice dean
