Team:Exeter/Public Engagement
Outreach and Public Engagement
Introduction to Outreach
A significant part of our project is devoted to outreach and public engagement, speaking to members of the public about synthetic biology and the research that we have been doing. We also wanted to keep in mind the iGEM values throughout the entirety of our project, and believe that our outreach and public engagement reflects this. We feel that making science accessible and inspiring to the public is an important part of synthetic biology, and spreading awareness about important environmental issues is a crucial part of our project.
As we have progressed through this project, we have been made increasingly aware of the importance of scientific responsibility and its significance in academic research. Scientific responsibility “actively involves the civil society in research and innovation processes so that current challenges can be met in a more effective way and in line with the values, expectations and requirements of society.”
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The purpose of our outreach, based on what we have observed in our human practices, is to provide knowledge surrounding the involvement of society into academic and scientific research, breaking down the barriers between scientific advancement and society. As a team of STEM students, we felt that the importance of responsible science hadn’t been taught in our academic careers at any stage. After some research we found out that academic responsibility especially within STEM is not a part of the national curriculum so we decided to focus a large part of our outreach on equipping future students with this training.
As well as scientific responsibility, we were also passionate about educating people about the specific themes found in our project. Microplastics are a hot topic at the moment but many people are unaware of the effects that their clothing choices have on this type of pollution. We considered it important to inform the public about how damaging microplastic pollution is to our planet, and how they can help reduce it. We felt that by combining these two strands of education, we could provide a well-rounded insight into a specific scientific challenge and how we can most responsibly approach it.
Promoting Responsible Science and the Integration of Social and Natural Sciences
We feel that the promotion of science, and in particular responsible science, is crucial at every stage of a person’s career. Throughout our respective educations as a team of STEM students, we have found that there has not been the emphasis on thoughtful consideration of whether the science we are doing is responsible and good for the world, and how we can make it better. We have therefore produced materials with the aim of equipping students at every stage to think deeply about their scientific contributions to society.
Primary Schools
We were contacted by a local Primary School in Exeter to present a workshop as part of their National Science Week event next March. After one of the teachers had heard about the workshop we were holding at the local library for the Fun Palace, they contacted us to see if we would be able to expand this activity for their school. In March 2020, we will be hosting a synthetic biology workshop and hosting a STEM careers talk for primary school children, to encourage the younger generation to think about careers in STEM and also to experience a challenging subject like synthetic biology in an exciting and hands-on way! We will be hosting the strawberry DNA activity that we ran at the Fun Palace local library event and talking about our experiences within STEM. We are very excited to be involved in National Science Week as we are very passionate about encouraging children to think about science in a fun and interactive way! See below for the Strawberry DNA activity protocol.
Secondary Schools
We created and developed a responsible science lesson intended for KS4 GCSE (ages 14-16) STEM subjects. This included a lesson plan, powerpoint presentation and worksheets for students to complete. The lesson focuses on the concept of responsible science and its importance and the worksheet then gave students the opportunity to define responsibility, responsible science and identify examples of responsible scientific practice. We emailed this to several schools in the local area to gain insight into whether they think lessons such as this could be integrated at GCSE level. Click the buttons below to find the lesson plan, worksheet and powerpoint presentation.
We also created a report to be sent to individuals in government who influence the national school curriculum. This report explained that our team felt, as STEM students, that our exposure to concepts such as academic integrity and scientific responsibility in school had not been enough to equip us for the kind of research experience that would have been beneficial as a university student. It also details that the early involvement of the social sciences in STEM subjects allows students to reflect on the application of their scientific research within society as a whole.
If you are on tablet please click here to open the pdf.
Universities
Curriculum Advisors
We created a report that could be sent to individuals who influence or make decisions regarding university curriculums. This report explained that our team felt, as STEM students, that our current exposure to concepts such as academic integrity and scientific responsibility has not been enough to equip us for this kind of research experience. It also details that the involvement of the social sciences in STEM subjects allows students to reflect on the application of their scientific research within society as a whole, and allows the research to be shaped by the people or the industry that will end up using or benefitting from it. We explained how iGEM had been very important for our team to learn these skills that we otherwise may not have had the chance to develop in our academic careers. We therefore asked if it would be possible for STEM courses to be adapted to include social science aspects. Having sent this to the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Education, we were invited to a meeting with the Associate Deans of Education in the three STEM colleges at the University of Exeter: the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and the College of Medicine and Health.
If you are on tablet please click here to open the pdf.
Three members of our team met with the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Education and the Associate Deans of Education for the STEM colleges to discuss the implementation of responsible science and the integration of scientific research into society.
We discussed the most effective ways to integrate these concepts in a way that encourages STEM students to learn this in a practical and engaging way. Some of the ideas we came up with included:
- Running a lecture series alongside practical lab modules to contextualise their research.
- Seminar and discussion based sessions focusing on case studies to look more closely into the social responsibility of science.
- Running this modules either by scientific lecturers with business ethics guest speakers or purely by social scientists.
- Combining students from different degrees to expose students to different ways of thinking: for example integrating humanities and science students in a seminar.
- Considering whether this part of the curriculum should be assessed or left as a compulsory module that is not assessed.
We found this meeting incredibly insightful and the Deans of the STEM colleges were extremely interested in both our iGEM project and our ideas as to how the social and natural sciences students could be exposed to ideas from each other to the benefit of both.
Through having this meeting, the Deans from the STEM colleges and the DVC want to stay in contact with our team to use our experience with the iGEM project as an example when constructing modules integrating social and responsible science in STEM undergraduate degrees! We have been invited to contribute towards rethinking content and restructuring certain STEM modules.
Students
We gave a lecture to second year biosciences students entitled 'Bioethics: iGEM Responsible Research and Innovation' to present our research and the different aspects of bioethics at different stages in the project. Two members of our team talked through our project and went into detail about the Human Practices we had considered throughout our project and how this links to responsible research and bioethics. We hope that this lecture to the second years biosciences students both encouraged them to think more about the applications of synthetic biology, introduced them to iGEM and that they saw the real world applications of responsible technology and innovation. Below is a link to the lecture itself and the Q&A session held at the end of the lecture which enabled the students to get involved in the discussion.
Scientists
We discovered, through talks with Dr Sarah Hartley from the University of Exeter Business School, that research groups rarely, if ever, have a social scientists working alongside their natural scientists in their research teams. We believe that social scientists should play a role in the development of scientific research, to ensure the responsible governance of science, technology and innovation as it moves from the lab to commercialisation. We wrote a think piece for a scientific journal, detailing what we had learnt through our human practices considerations. The article contained an analysis on the barriers to scientific advancement, especially in the area of environmental change. We sent the piece to prestigious scientific journals, as this is the most likely place to reach academics interested in this question. We hope that this will encourage natural scientists to include social scientists into their research teams to enrich their projects and to promote responsible, considered research from the earliest point possible in the process.
We have submitted our opinion piece to the academic journal 'Embo Reports' as we believe that spreading awareness about responsible science is essential in getting people to consider this topic in the context of their own scientific experiences.
If you are on tablet please click here to open the pdf.
Microplastic Awareness
We are passionate about the prevention of microplastic pollution, and spreading awareness is a major tool we can use to promote this. Educating the public on the dangers, and advising them on how to change their behaviour to reduce their plastic consumption is important, but we also recognise the importance of targeting large industries. These industries are huge contributors to the plastic problem so encouraging businesses to change their practices can have a huge impact on reducing environmental damage caused by microplastics.
Fun Palace Workshop
We teamed up with Exeter Library to host a workshop for children as part of Exeter Fun Palace. Fun Palace is an organisation that encourages communities to come together to celebrate art and science so we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to promote science to younger children in a way that would hopefully encourage them to take an interest in it in the long term. We also encouraged other iGEM teams to attend and organise their own Fun Palace events.
The Fun Palace event at the public library in Exeter was a brilliant event for our iGEM team as we got the opportunity to talk to the general public about our project as well as bringing more awareness to genetic engineering and synthetic biology. We hosted a strawberry DNA activity for children to engage with the concepts of DNA and synthetic biology. This also gave us the opportunity to talk to the parents and other adults about their awareness of genetic engineering and use the surveys we shared with the Oxford iGEM Team as part of our *collaboration: link it* to investigate this further.
We also brought a microscope along to the event so that both children and adults could look at the microplastic fibres we had caught in the washes during the testing phase in both a test tube and up close under fluorescence. This stirred up a lot of interest amongst both groups, especially the adults, most of which didn't realise how much of microplastic pollution comes from washing machines.
We also encouraged any children to think about plastic waste, using plastic bottle lids that we collected from cafes in the Exeter city centre and on campus. After the strawberry DNA activity, we asked the kids to glue plastic bottle lids to a large fish collage we were creating, whilst discussing the importance of recycling plastics!
After success at the Fun Palace, one of the parents who attended the event told the local primary schools about our strawberry DNA extraction and how excited their children were to do this experiment themselves! One of the local primary schools then contacted us and asked whether we would be available in March to take part in the National Science Week workshops that are happening at their school. Therefore, we will be hosting this event again and giving a STEM careers talk to primary school children in the local area to get them excited about synthetic biology and science in general!
Government Incentive Report
After meetings with many of our stakeholders, we realised that one of the main barriers to integrating our filter design into washing machines and water treatment plants is cost. Clothing mills run on very fine margins so we realised that if we wanted to make a real impact in the prevention of microfibres entering the water systems in this way, we would need the filter integrated into washing machines and ideally scaled up for fashion mills and manufacturers. Therefore, we wrote a report aimed at government officials to discuss the introduction of self-regulation for washing machine companies. The self-regulation would encourage the integration of filters directly into the machines with the incentive of tax breaks or subsidisation of the upfront costs of the filter itself.
If you are on tablet please click here to open the pdf.
After sending this report to our local MP's in the South-West we were invited to Westminster to talk to MP Steve Double about the microplastic problem that faces our planet and how we think it would be best to tackle this problem. We hope to talk to the MP from Newquay and St Austell, Steve Double, about legislation to encourage washing machine manufacturers to integrate filters into their washing machines. This meeting is occurring soon after iGEM, in mid-November, and our team are excited to see the outcome of it and how we could potentially make a real difference to this issue.
Climate Change Demonstrations
Some of our team members attended the Extinction Rebellion Action in Bristol to provide information about microplastics pollution. Extinction Rebellion is an organisation that holds non-violent protest with the aim of getting the Government to declare a climate emergency. With the UK government having now declared a climate emergency, protests now continue so that action can be taken to prevent the further impacts of climate change. We created a leaflet to hand out to the general public at the Extinction Rebellion Action. This leaflet that briefly introduced our project, some facts about microplastic pollution and some helpful tips on what people can do in their own lives to reduce this kind of pollution.
Local Government and Council Meetings
We contacted a local Conservative Party member, who then took our research proposal back to the Conservative meeting in Exeter to make them more aware of the microplastics issue and how we plan to combat it.
In Exeter a local councillors meeting was held to discuss an action plan that falls in line with the declaration of climate emergency. We felt this was a good place to hear the opinions of both the councillors and the general public in Exeter and the surrounding area who were attending the meeting out of passion and interest. We spoke to several different people about microplastic pollution in the fashion industry and how we are aiming to tackle it; including Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors from varying local areas, members of the public and the Mayor of a neighbouring town. The overall feedback given at the event was enthusiastic support of this kind of development in tackling plastic pollution. Feedback from the public and councillors can be found in the speech bubbles.
Newspaper Articles
Much of our outreach so far has been focused on Exeter and our surrounding area. In order to reach a much wider audience, we wrote a newspaper article about the microplastic problem within the fashion industry, and how our team is working to combat it. The University of Exeter displayed us on the front page of their website and wrote a press release to send out to national newspapers.
Our research has been broadcasted on news outlets internationally. Here you can find a selection of the articles:
- Phys.org - Click here for the article!
- Engineers magazine - Click here for the article!
- IdeaConnection - Click here for the article!
- RadioExe - Click here for the article!
- Agen Parl - Click here for the article!
- Engineering 360 - Click here for the article!
- Vision Group for Sidmouth - Click here for the article!
- EurekAlert - Click here for the article!
We have also been in conversation with Wired Magazine, the Environmental editor from the Times and The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. We have answered any questions they have had regarding our press release and our research project in general.
Radio Appearances
We were asked to share about the microplastic problem and our response to it on the breakfast show at BBC Radio Devon. We shared our experience of the iGEM competition and how it had prompted us to conduct research into this issue and then develop a solution for it.
Awareness Leaflets
Our team has learnt so much about microplastic pollution since starting this project, so we wanted to provide the general public with facts and figures about plastic and microplastic pollution and how it is becoming an increasing problem to our planet’s ecosystems. We felt that producing an awareness leaflet to place around the city was a good way of doing this. The back of the leaflet also included information about iGEM and our team’s project for this year, explaining how we plan to tackle this environmental issue. We pinned the leaflet to local community boards in cafes, supermarkets and the public library to spread awareness in as many places as possible, and to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Online Presence
We have utilised social media to spread awareness about the issue of microplastics and plastic waste. We believe that the internet, and social media in particular, are good ways to reach people who may otherwise not hear about issues outside of their immediate circle. We have set up a Facebook page to inform people about the issue of microplastics and our specific solution to it. This has over 450 people following it and has reached people from over 30 different countries all over the world, including Romania, Peru and the USA. This has allowed us to share relevant news articles and research papers to a wide audience to encourage them to get involved in thinking about their own contributions to the microplastic issue and how they can help. We have also been promoting a petition to encourage the UK Government to reconsider their stance on requiring new washing machines to be fitted with microplastic capturing systems. We have used our Instagram and Twitter pages to reach and collaborate with other iGEM teams as well as businesses and sustainability influencers, who have shared our project to reach more people. We also have a LinkedIn account to engage with businesses and sustainability professionals who have taken an interest in our research. The University of Exeter has also featured our project heavily on their website, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
