Team:GIFU TOKAI/Public Engagement
Education and Engagement
How we interacts with public
Exhibition of poster and flyers of iGEM GIFU TOKAI at Ibigawa Green Tea festival
An event fostering regional vitalization was held in Ibigawa-Cho, Gifu to advertise its local specialty, a fermented tea, on May 26th. In the event, residents of the town and students from Ibi-high school sold fruits, vegetables, and foods made from tea, such as tempura of tea leaves. Besides, they also exhibit some posters to develop the culture of fermented tea and lots of people gathered to exchange their opinions and suggestions about the tea. Both children and adults took part in the event and got a deep understanding of the drinking.
We, iGEM GIFU_TOKAI, set up a booth, and displayed our poster and hand out the materials. We described our research project and information about crowdfunding. We also cooperated with our PI, Professor IWAHASHI, and talked about the microbiological phenomenon of the fermented tea and how important to perform genetic analysis on traditional Japanese food to maintain the culture to the participants. In short, we let people of all ages who participated in the event know about iGEM Gifu. Through this event, we learned the importance of creating an opportunity to tell the industry and public people about science and Synthetic Biology to share precise knowledge.
Poster session with high school students in Open Campus of Gifu University
We told our activities for high school students on OPEN CAMPUS of Gifu University. Open Campus is an event that Universities in Japan invite high school students to introduce school life. We exhibited the panel which shows the description of iGEM competition and some research result of iGEM Gifu 2018 team. A bunch of high school students who came to our exhibition were actively interested in biology and chemistry, so they listened to what we spoke eagerly. They seemed to be surprised at iGEM activities because members of iGEM can have research experience even they are undergraduate students. Also, some students said they would love to participate in our team after the entrance of our university. Last year we had a similar exhibition about iGEM and welcomed one member who got interested in us then. Following him, we hope some of them widen the possibility of synthetic biology more as a member of iGEM GIFU TOKAI. We thought our action and contribution on Open Campus led to transferring the soul of iGEM to next generation.
Poster exhibition in Gifu University Fair
Some members of the iGEM Gifu team had a chance to introduce iGEM Gifu's activities in Gifu University's Fair 2019 on March 22. This fair has been held every year since 2009 as a project for the general public to learn about the university's education, research, and social contribution activities. In this event, we explained visitors about what is iGEM and a project of iGEM-Gifu 2018 to visitors. Almost all people who visited us were not familiar with science very much, particularly with biology. One of the policies of iGEM is the advancement of synthetic biology. So this is an excellent opportunity to spread fascination with and have people come in contact with SynBio and iGEM. We hope that the visitors will take an interest in biology and our activities through this exhibition.
Getting financial support from Ito Scholarship Foundation
Our team was chosen by Ito Scholarship Foundation this year as a group which may contribute to the development of Gifu Prefecture. Ito Scholarship Foundation was established by Yoshimi ITO, who was a founder of Valor Holdings. The organization aims to support girls, boys and all youth who bear the next generation of Gifu prefecture. The group also desires to nurture talented human resources who can lead the society by providing financial assistance to excellent and well-educated students or groups. Ito Scholarship Foundation collaborates with the educational committee of Gifu prefecture. We told the organization about what iGEM is and how it can grow members not as scientists but as humans. Besides, we explained what we plan to talk about in the competition and possibilities of our research. As the foundation certified us as a selected group, iGEM GIFU TOKAI is recognized more around our city.
We have got 5500 dollars of the budget from the organization. Without their support, we could not perform our project. We want to express our sincere thanks to Ito Scholarship Foundation.
Gifu Newspaper
On June 26, we have been offered an interview from Gifu Newspaper. We told about our research description, methods, and how we could apply the technology to the real world for about two hours. We also mentioned purposes and the meaning of iGEM competition and activities; for example, we had a chance to experience researches on what members of iGEM team would like to study while they are undergraduate students. We conveyed them our strong passion for our study and the competition in Boston.
Nowadays, Not so many people know about iGEM in Japan. We strongly believe that we contribute to spreading the knowledge of iGEM and Synthetic Biology to the public through our article of the newspaper. The article is exhibited as an online article, too. It means that many junior high school students, high school students and some companies may get interested in iGEM and join our activities in the very near future. We firmly hope more people get involved in the activities and Synthetic Biology and cooperate with researchers to make this field more advanced.